The water-babies : a fairy tale for a land-baby

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THE WATER-BABIES

THE

WATER-BAB I ES

Jfitivt) 'title for it i/anb-llabn

BY

CHARLES KINGSLEY

NE W EDITION

WITH ONE HUNDRED ILLUSTRATIONS BY LINLEY SAMBOURNE

HontJon

MACMILLAN AND CO.
1885

Printed by R. & R. Clakk, Edinburgh.

TO

MY YOUNGEST SON

GRENVILLE ARTHUR

AND

TO ALL OTHER GOOD LITTLE BOYS

COME READ ME MY KIDDLE, EACH GOOD LITTLE MAN ;

IF YOU CANNOT READ IT, NO GROWN-UP FOLK CAN.

B

“ I heard a thousand blended notes,

While in a grove I sate reclined ;

In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

“To her fair works did Nature link

The human soul that through me ran ;

And much it grieved my heart to think,

What man has made of man.”

Wordsworth.

CHAPTER I.

NCE upon a time there was
a little chimney-sweep, and
his name was Tom. That is a short name, and you have
heard it before, so you will not have much trouble in
remembering it. He lived in a great town in the North
country, where there were plenty of chimneys to sweep,
and plenty of money for Tom to earn and his master to
spend. He could not read nor write, and did not care

4 THE WATER-BABIES :

to do either ; and he never washed himself, for there
was no water up the court where he lived. He had
never been taught to say his prayers. He never had
heard of God, or of Christ, except in words which you
never have heard, and which it would have been well
if he had never heard. He cried half his time, and
laughed the other half. He cried when he had to
climb the dark flues, rubbing his poor knees and elbows
raw ; and when the soot got into his eyes, which it did
every day in the week ; and when his master beat him,
which he did every day in the week ; and when he had
not enough to eat, which happened every day in the
week likewise. And he laughed the other half of the
day, when he was tossing halfpennies with the other
boys, or playing leap-frog over the posts, or bowling
stones at the horses’ legs as they trotted by, which last
was excellent fun, when there was a wall at hand
behind which to hide. As for chimney-sweeping, and
being hungry, and being beaten, he took all that for the
way of the world, like the rain and snow and thunder,
and stood manfully with his back to it till it was over, as
his old donkey did to a hailstorm ; and then shook his
ears and was as jolly as ever; and thought of the fine
times coming, when he would be a man, and a master

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 5

sweep, and sit in the public-house with a quart of beer
and a long pipe, and play cards for silver money, and
wear velveteens and ankle-jacks, and keep a white bull¬
dog with one gray ear, and carry her puppies in his
pocket, just like a man. And he would have appren¬
tices, one, two, three,
if he could. How he
would bully them, and
knock them about, just
as his master did to
him ; and make them
carry home the soot
sacks, while he rode
before them on his
donkey, with a pipe in his mouth and a flower in his
button-hole, like a king at the head of his army. Yes,
there were good times coming ; and, when his master let
him have a pull at the leavings ol his beer, Tom was the
jolliest boy in the whole town.

One day a smart little groom rode into the court
where Tom lived. Tom was just hiding behind a wall,
to heave half a brick at his horse’s legs, as is the custom
of that country when they welcome strangers ; but the
groom saw him, and halloed to him to know where Mr.

6 THE WATER-BABIES:

Grimes, the chimney-sweep, lived. Now, Mr. Grimes
was Tom’s own master, and Tom was a good man of
business, and always civil to customers, so he put the
half-brick down quietly behind the wall, and proceeded
to take orders.

Mr. Grimes was to come up next morning to Sir
John Harthover’s, at the Place, for his old chimney¬
sweep was gone to prison, and the chimneys wanted
sweeping. And so he rode away, not giving Tom time
to ask what the sweep had gone to prison for, which
was a matter of interest to Tom, as he had been in
prison once or twice himself. Moreover, the groom

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 7

looked so very neat and clean, with his drab gaiters,
drab breeches, drab jacket, snow-white tie with a smart
pin in it, and clean round ruddy face, that Tom was
offended and disgusted at his appearance, and considered
him a stuck-up fellow, who gave himself airs because
he wore smart clothes, and other people paid for them ;
and went behind the wall to fetch the half-brick after
all ; but did not, remembering that he had come in the
way of business, and was, as it were, under a flag of
truce.

His master was so delighted at his new customer
that he knocked Tom down out of hand, and drank
more beer that night than he usually did in two, in
order to be sure of getting up in time next morning ;
for the more a man’s head aches when he wakes, the
more glad he is to turn out, and have a breath of fresh
air. And, when he did get up at four the next morning,
he knocked Tom down again, in order to teach him (as
young gentlemen used to be taught at public schools)
that he must be an extra good boy that day, as they
were going to a very great house, and might make a
very good thing of it, if they could but give satisfaction.

And Tom thought so likewise, and, indeed, would
have done and behaved his best, even without being

8 THE WATER-BABIES :

knocked down. For, of all places upon earth, Hart-
hover Place (which he had never seen) was the most
wonderful, and, of all men on earth, Sir John (whom he
had seen, having been sent to gaol by him twice) was
the most awful.

Harthover Place was really a grand place, even for
the rich North country; with a house so large that in
the frame-breaking riots, which Tom could just remem¬
ber, the Duke of Wellington, with ten thousand soldiers
to match, were easily housed therein ; at least, so Tom
believed ; with a park full of deer, which Tom believed
to be monsters who were in the habit of eating children ;
with miles of game-preserves, in which Mr. Grimes and
the collier lads poached at times, on which occasions
Tom saw pheasants, and wondered what they tasted
like ; with a noble salmon-river, in which Mr. Grimes
and his friends would have liked to poach ; but then
they must have got into cold water, and that they did
not like at all. In short, Harthover was a grand place,
and Sir John a grand old man, whom even Mr. Grimes
respected ; for not only could he send Mr. Grimes to
prison when he deserved it, as he did once or twice a
week ; not only did he own all the land about for miles ;
not only was he a jolly, honest, sensible squire, as ever

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 9

kept a pack of hounds, who would do what he thought
right by his neighbours, as well as get what he thought
right for himself ; but, what was more, he weighed full

fifteen stone, was nobody knew how many inches round
the chest, and could have thrashed Mr. Grimes himself
in fair fight, which very few folk round there could do,
and which, my dear little boy, would not have been

io THE WATER-BABIES:

right for him to do, as a great many things are not which
one both can do, and would like very much to do. So
Mr. Grimes touched his hat to him when he rode through
the town, and called him a “buirdly awd chap,” and his
young ladies “gradely lasses,” which are two high com¬
pliments in the North country; and thought that that
made up for his poaching Sir John’s pheasants ; whereby
you may perceive that Mr. Grimes had not been to a
properly-inspected Government National School.

Now, I dare say, you never got up at three o’clock
on a midsummer morning. Some people get up then
because they want to catch salmon ; and some because
they want to climb Alps ; and a great many more
because they must, like Tom. But, I assure you, that
three o’clock on a midsummer morning is the pleasantest
time of all the twenty- four hours, and all the three
hundred and sixty-five days ; and why every one does
not get up then, I never could tell, save that they are all
determined to spoil their nerves and their complexions
by doing all night what they might just as well do all
day. But Tom, instead of going out to dinner at half¬
past eight at night, and to a ball at ten, and finishing off
somewhere between twelve and four, went to bed at
seven, when his master went to the public-house, and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. n

slept like a dead pig ; for which reason he was as piert
as a game-cock (who always gets up early to wake the
maids), and just ready to get up wdien the fine gentlemen
and ladies were just ready to go to bed.

So he and his master set out ; Grimes rode the
donkey in front, and Tom and the brushes walked
behind; out of the court,
and up the street, past
the closed window-shut¬
ters, and the winking
weary policemen, and
the roofs all shining gray
in the gray dawn.

They passed through
the pitmen’s village, all
shut up and silent now, and through the turnpike ; and
then they were out in the real country, and plodding along
the black dusty road, between black slag walls, with no
sound but the groaning and thumping of the pit-engine
in the next field. But soon the road grew white, and
the walls likewise ; and at the wall’s foot grew long
grass and gay flowers, all drenched with dew ; and
instead of the groaning of the pit-engine, they heard the
skylark saying his matins high up in the air, and the

12 THE WATER-BABIES:

pit-bird warbling in the sedges, as he had warbled all
night long.

O O

All else was silent. For old Mrs. Earth was still
fast asleep ; and, like many pretty people, she looked
still prettier asleep than awake. The great elm-trees
in the gold-green meadows were fast asleep above, and
the cows fast asleep beneath them ; nay, the few clouds
which were about were fast asleep likewise, and so tired
that they had lain down on the earth to rest, in long
white flakes and bars, among the stems of the elm-trees,
and along the tops of the alders by the stream, waiting
for the sun to bid them rise and go about their day’s
business in the clear blue overhead.

On they went ; and Tom looked, and looked, for he
never had been so far into the country before ; and
longed to get over a gate, and pick buttercups, and
look for birds’ nests in the hedge ; but Mr. Grimes was
a man of business, and would not have heard of that.

Soon they came up with a poor Irishwoman, trudg¬
ing along with a bundle at her back. She had a gray
shawl over her head, and a crimson madder petticoat ;
so you may be sure she came from Galway. She had
neither shoes nor stockings, and limped along as if she
were tired and footsore ; but she was a very tall handsome

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 13

woman, with bright gray eyes, and heavy black hair
hanging about her cheeks. And she took Mr. Grimes’
fancy so much, that when
he came alongside he
called out to her :

“ This is a hard road
for a gradely foot like
that. Will ye up, lass, ,v
and ride behind me ?”

But, perhaps, she did
not admire Mr. Grimes’ '
look and voice ; for she
answered quietly :

“ No, thank you : I’d
sooner walk with your
little lad here.”

“You may please yourself,” growled Grimes, and
went on smoking.

So she walked beside Tom, and talked to him, and
asked him where he lived, and what he knew, and all
about himself, till Tom thought he had never met such
a pleasant-spoken woman. And she asked him, at last,
whether he said his prayers ! and seemed sad when he
told her that he knew no prayers to say.

i4 THE WATER-BABIES:

Then he asked her where she lived, and she said far
away by the sea. And Tom asked her about the sea ;
and she told him how it rolled and roared over the rocks
in winter nights, and lay still in the bright summer days,
for the children to bathe and play in it ; and many a
story more, till Tom longed to go and see the sea, and
bathe in it likewise.

At last, at the bottom of a hill, they came to a
spring ; not such a spring as you see here, which soaks
up out of a white gravel in the bog, among red fly¬
catchers, and pink bottle-heath, and sweet white orchis ;
nor such a one as you may see, too, here, which bubbles
up under the warm sandbank in the hollow lane, by the
great tuft of lady ferns, and makes the sand dance reels
at the bottom, day and night, all the year round ; not
such a spring as either of those ; but a real North
country limestone fountain, like one of those in Sicily
or Greece, where the old heathen tancied the nymphs
sat cooling themselves the hot summer’s day, while the
shepherds peeped at them from behind the bushes.
Out of a low cave of rock, at the foot of a limestone
crag, the great fountain rose, quelling, and bubbling, and
gurgling, so clear that you could not tell where the
water ended and the air began ; and ran away under

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 15

the road, a stream large enough to turn a mill ; among
blue geranium, and golden globe-flower, and wild rasp¬
berry, and the bird-cherry with its tassels of snow.

And there Grimes stopped, and looked; and Tom
looked too. Tom was wondering whether anything lived
in that dark cave, and came out at night to fly in the
meadows. But Grimes was not wondering at all. With¬
out a word, he got off his donkey, and clambered over
the low road wall, and knelt down, and began dipping
his ugly head into the spring — and very dirty he made
it.

Tom was picking the flowers as fast as he could.
The Irishwoman helped him, and showed him how to
tie them up ; and a very pretty nosegay they had made
between them. But when he saw Grimes actually wash,
he stopped, quite astonished ; and when Grimes had
finished, and began shaking his ears to dry them, he
said :

“Why, master, I never saw you do that before.’’

“ Nor will again, most likely. ’Twasn’t for cleanli¬
ness I did it, but for coolness. I’d be ashamed to want
washing every week or so, like any smutty collier lad.’’

“ I wish I might go and dip my head in,” said poor
little Tom. “ It must be as good as putting it under

1 6 THE WATER-BABIES:

the town-pump ; and there is no beadle here to drive a
chap away.”

“Thou come along,” said Grimes ; “what dost want
with washing thyself? Thou did not drink half a gallon
of beer last night, like me.”

“ I don’t care for you,” said naughty Tom, and ran
down to the stream, and began washing his face.

Grimes was very sulky, because the woman preferred
Tom’s company to his ; so he dashed at him with horrid
words, and tore him up from his knees, and began beat¬
ing him. But Tom was accustomed to that, and got his
head safe between Mr. Grimes’ legs, and kicked his
shins with all his might.

“ Are you not ashamed of yourself, Thomas Grimes ?”
cried the Irishwoman over the wall.

Grimes looked up, startled at her knowing his name ;
but all he answered was, “ No, nor never was yet ;” and
went on beating Tom.

“True for you. If you ever had been ashamed of
yourself, you would have gone over into Vendale long
ago.”

“What do you know about Vendale?” shouted
Grimes ; but he left off beating Tom.

“ I know about Vendale, and about you, too. I

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 17

know, for instance, what happened in Aldermire Copse,
by night, two years ago come Martinmas.’’

“You do?” shouted Grimes; and leaving Tom, he
climbed up over the wall, and faced the woman. Tom
thought he was going to strike her ; but she looked him
too full and fierce in the face for that.

“Yes; I was there,” said the Irishwoman quietly.

“You are no Irishwoman, by your speech,” said
Grimes, after many bad words.

“ Never mind who I am. I saw what I saw ; and
if you strike that boy again, I can tell what I know.”

Grimes seemed quite cowed, and got on his donkey
without another word.

“Stop!” said the Irishwoman. “I have one more
word for you both ; for you will both see me again
before all is over. Those that wish to be clean, clean
they will be ; and those that wish to be foul, foul they
will be. Remember.”

And she turned away, and through a gate into the
meadow. Grimes stood still a moment, like a man who
had been stunned. Then he rushed after her, shouting,
“You come back.” But when he got into the meadow,
the woman was not there.

Had she hidden away ? There was no place to

c

THE WATER-BABIES :

i S

hide in. But Grimes looked about, and Tom also, for
he was as puzzled as Grimes himself at her disappearing

so suddenly ; but look where they would, she was not
there.

Grimes came back again, as silent as a post, for he
was a little frightened ; and getting on his donkey,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

l9

filled a fresh pipe, and smoked away, leaving Tom in
peace.

And now they had gone three miles and more, and
came to Sir John’s lodge-gates.

Very grand lodges they were, with very grand iron
gates and stone gate-posts, and on the top of each a

20 - THE WATER-BABIES :

most dreadful bogy, all teeth, horns, and tail, which was
the crest which Sir John's ancestors wore in the Wars of
the Roses ; and very prudent men they .were to wear it,
for all their enemies must have run for their lives at the
very first sight of them.

Grimes rang at the gate, and out came a keeper on
the spot, and opened.

“ I was told to expect thee,” he said. “ Now thou’lt
be so good as to keep to the main avenue, and not let
me find a hare or a rabbit on thee when thou comest
back. I shall look sharp for one, I tell thee.”

“Not if it’s in the bottom of the soot-bag,” quoth
Grimes, and at that he laughed ; and the keeper laughed
and said :

“ If that’s thy sort, I may as well walk up with thee
to the hall.”

“ I think thou best had. It’s thy business to see
after thy game, man, and not mine.”

So the keeper went with them ; and, to Tom’s sur¬
prise, he and Grimes chatted together all the way quite
pleasantly. He did not know that a keeper is only a
poacher turned outside in, and a poacher a keeper turned
inside out.

They walked up a great lime avenue, a full mile long,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 21

and between their stems Tom peeped trembling at the
horns of the sleeping deer, which stood up among the
ferns. Tom had never seen such enormous trees, and
as he looked up he fancied that the blue sky rested on

their heads. But he was puzzled very much by a strange
murmuring noise, which followed them all the way. So
much puzzled, that at last he took courage to ask the
keeper what it was.

He spoke very civilly, and called him Sir, for he
was horribly afraid of him, which pleased the keeper,

22 THE WATER-BABIES:

and he told him that they were the bees about the lime
flowers.

“What are bees ?” asked Tom.

“What make honey.’’

“What is honey ?” asked Tom.

“ Thou hold thy noise,” said Grimes.

“ Let the boy be,’’ said the keeper. “ He’s a civil
young chap now, and that’s more than he’ll be long if he
bides with thee.”

Grimes laughed, for he took that for a compliment.

“ I wish I were a keeper,” said Tom, “ to live in such
a beautiful place, and wear green velveteens, and have a
real dog- whistle at my button, like you.”

The keeper laughed ; he was a kind-hearted fellow
enough.

“ Let well alone, lad, and ill too at times. Thy
life’s safer than mine at all events, eh, Mr. Grimes ?”

And Grimes laughed a^ain, and then the two men
began talking quite low. Tom could hear, though, that
it was about some poaching fight ; and at last Grimes
said surlily, “ Hast thou anything against me ?”

“Not now.”

“ Then don’t ask me any questions till thou hast, for
I am a man of honour.”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

23

And at that they both laughed again, and thought it
a very good joke.

And by this time they were come up to the great
iron gates in front of the house ; and Tom stared through
them at the rhododendrons and azaleas, which were all
in flower ; and then at the house itself, and wondered
how many chimneys there were in it, and how long ago
it was built, and what was the man’s name that built it,
and whether he got much money for his job ?

These last were very difficult questions to answer.
For Harthover had been built at ninety different times,
and in nineteen different styles, and looked as if some¬
body had built a whole street of houses of every imagin¬
able shape, and then stirred them together with a
spoon.

For the attics were A nglo-Saxon .

The third-floor Norman.

The second Cinque-cento.

The first-floor Elizabethan.

The right wing Pitre Doric.

o o

The centre Early English , with a huge portico copied
from the Parthenon.

The left wing pure Boeotian , which the country folk

24 THE WATER-BABIES :

admired most of all , bee ait sc it zuas just like the new bar¬
racks in the town , only three times as big.

The grand staircase zuas copied from the Catacombs at
Rome.

The back staircase from the Tajmahal at Agra. This
was built by Sir Johns great-great-great-uncle , who won,
in Lord Clive s Indian Wars, plenty of money, plenty of
wounds, and no more taste than his betters.

The cellars zuere copied from the caves of Elephant a.

The offices from the Pavilion at Brighton.

And the rest from nothing in heaven, or earth, or
under the earth.

So that Harthover House was a great puzzle to anti¬
quarians, and a thorough Naboth’s vineyard to critics,
and architects, and all persons who like meddling with
other men's business, and spending other men’s money.
So they were all setting upon poor Sir John, year after
year, and trying to talk him into spending a hundred
thousand pounds or so, in building, to please them and
not himself. But he always put them off, like a canny
North-countryman as he was. One wanted him to build
a Gothic house, but he said he was no Goth ; and another
to build an Elizabethan, but he said he lived under good

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

2 5

Queen Victoria, and not good Oueen Bess ; and another
was bold enough to tell him that his house was ugly, but
he said he lived inside it, and not outside ; and another,
that there was no unity in it, but he said that that was
just why he liked the old place. For he liked to see
how each Sir John, and Sir Hugh, and Sir Ralph, and
Sir Randal, had left his mark upon the place, each after
his own taste ; and he had no more notion of disturbing
his ancestors’ work than of disturbing their graves. For
now the house looked like a real live house, that had a
history, and had grown and grown as the world grew ;
and that it was only an upstart fellow who did not know
who his own grandfather was, who would change it for
some spick and span new Gothic or Elizabethan thing,
which looked as if it had been all spawned in a night, as
mushrooms are. From which you may collect (if you
have wit enough) that Sir John was a very sound-headed,
sound -hearted squire, and just the man to keep the
country side in order, and show good sport with his
hounds.

But Tom and his master did not go in through the
great iron gates, as if they had been Dukes or Bishops,
but round the back way, and a very long way round it
was ; and into a little back-door, where the ash-boy let

26 THE WATER-BABIES:

them in, yawning horribly ; and then in a passage the
housekeeper met them, in such a flowered chintz dressing-
gown, that Tom mistook her for My Lady herself, and
she Q-ave Grimes solemn orders about “You will take

care of this, and take
care of that,” as if he
was going up the chim¬
neys, and not Tom.
And Grimes listened,
and said every now and
then, under his voice,
“You’ll mind that, you
little beggar ? ” • and
Tom did mind, all at
least that he could.
And then the house¬
keeper turned them in¬
to a grand room, all
covered up in sheets of
brown paper, and bade
them begin, in a lofty and tremendous voice ; and so after
a whimper or two, and a kick from his master, into the grate
Tom went, and up the chimney, while a housemaid stayed
in the room to watch the furniture ; to whom Mr. Grimes

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

27

paid many playful and chivalrous compliments, but met
with very slight encouragement in return.

How many chimneys Tom swept I cannot say ; but
he swept so many that he got quite tired, and puzzled

too, for they were not like the town Hues to which he
was accustomed, but such as you would find — if you
would only get up them and look, which perhaps you
would not like to do — in old country-houses, large and
crooked chimneys, which had been altered again and

28 THE WATER-BABIES:

again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing (as
Professor Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly
lost his way in them ; not that he cared much for that,
though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as much at
home in a chimney as a mole is underground ; but at last,
coming down as he thought the right chimney, he came
down the wrong one, and found himself standing on the
hearthrug in a room the like of which he had never seen
before.

Tom had never seen the like. He had never been
in gentlefolks’ rooms but when the carpets were all up,
and the curtains down, and the furniture huddled together
under a cloth, and the pictures covered with aprons and
dusters ; and he had often enough wondered what the
rooms were like when they were all ready for the quality
to sit in. And now he saw, and he thought the sight
very pretty.

The room was all dressed in white, — white window-
curtains, white bed-curtains, white furniture, and white
walls, with just a few lines of pink here and there. The
carpet was all over gay little flowers ; and the walls
were hung with pictures in gilt frames, which amused
Tom very much. There were pictures of ladies and
gentlemen, and pictures of horses and dogs. The horses

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 29

lie liked ; but the dogs he did not care for much, for
there were no bull-dogs among them, not even a terrier.
But the two pictures which took his fancy most were,
one a man in long garments, with little children and
their mothers round him, who was laying his hand upon
the children’s heads. That was a very pretty picture,
Tom thought, to hang in a lady’s room. For he could
see that it was a lady’s room by the dresses which lay
about.

The other picture was that of a man nailed to a
cross, which surprised Tom much. He fancied that he
had seen something like it in a shop-window. But why
was it there? “Poor man,” thought Tom, “and he
looks so kind and quiet. But why should the lady have
such a sad picture as that in her room ? Perhaps it
was some kinsman of hers, who had been murdered by
the savages in foreign parts, and she kept it there for a
remembrance.” And Tom felt sad, and awed, and turned
to look at something else.

The next thing he saw, and that too puzzled him,
was a washing-stand, with ewers and basins, and soap
and brushes, and towels, and a large bath full of clean
water — what a heap of things all for washing! “She
must be a very dirty lady,” thought Tom, “by my

THE WATER-BABIES :

master's rule, to want as much scrubbing as all that.
But she must be very cunning to put the dirt out of the
way so well afterwards, for I don’t see a speck about the
room, not even on the very towels.”

And then, looking toward the bed, he saw that dirty
lady, and held his breath with astonishment.

Under the snow-white coverlet, upon the snow-white
pillow, lay the most beautiful little girl that Tom had
ever seen. H er cheeks were almost as white as the
pillow, and her hair was like threads of gold spread all
about over the bed. She might have been as old as

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BAI3Y.

3i

Tom, or maybe a year or two older ; but Tom did not
think of that. He thought only of her delicate skin and
golden hair, and wondered whether she was a real live
person, or one of the wax dolls he had seen in the shops.
But when he saw her breathe, he made up his mind that
she was alive, and stood staring at her, as if she had
been an anofel out of heaven.

No. She cannot be dirty. She never could have
been dirty, thought Tom to himself. And then he
thought, “And are all people like that when they are
washed ?” And he looked at his own wrist, and tried
to rub the soot off, and wondered whether it ever would
come off. “ Certainly I should look much prettier then,
if I grew at all like her."

And looking round, he suddenly saw, standing close
to him, a little ugly, black, ragged figure, with bleared
eyes and grinning white teeth. He turned on it angrily.
What did such a little black ape want in that sweet
young lady's room ? And behold, it was himself, re¬
flected in a great mirror, the like of which Tom had
never seen before.

And Tom, for the first time in his life, found out
that he was dirty ; and burst into tears with shame and
anger ; and turned to sneak up the chimney again and

32 THE WATER-BABIES:

hide ; and upset the fender and threw the fire-irons
down, with a noise as of ten thousand tin kettles tied to
ten thousand mad dogs’ tails.

Up jumped the little white lady in her bed, and,
seeing Tom, screamed as shrill as any peacock. In
rushed a stout old nurse from the next room, and seeing

Tom likewise, made up her mind that he had come to
rob, plunder, destroy, and burn ; and dashed at him, as
he lay over the fender, so fast that she caught him by
the jacket.

But she did not hold him. Tom had been in a
policeman’s hands many a time, and out of them too,
what is more ; and he would have been ashamed to face

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

33

his friends for ever if he had been stupid enough to
be caught by an old woman ; so he doubled under the
good lady’s arm, across the room, and out of the window
in a moment.

He did not need to drop out, though he would have
done so bravely enough. Nor even to let himself down

a spout, which would have been an old game to him ;
for once he got up by a spout to the church roof, he said
to take jackdaws' eggs, but the policeman said to steal
lead ; and, when he was seen on high, sat there till the
sun got too hot, and came down by another spout,
leaving the policemen to go back to the stationhouse
and eat their dinners.

But all under the window spread a tree, with great

D

34 THE WATER-BABIES:

leaves and sweet white flowers, almost as big as his
head. It was magnolia, I suppose; but Tom knew
nothing about that, and cared less ; for down the tree he
went, like a cat, and across the garden lawn, and over
the iron railings, and up the park towards the wood,

leaving the old nurse to scream murder and fire at the
window.

The under gardener, mowing, saw Tom, and threw
down his scythe ; caught his leg in it, and cut his shin
open, whereby he kept his bed for a week ; but in his
hurry he never knew it, and gave chase to poor Tom.
The dairymaid heard the noise, got the churn between
her knees, and tumbled over it, spilling all the cream ;

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 35

and yet she jumped up, and gave chase to Tom. A
groom cleaning Sir John’s hack at the stables let him go
loose, whereby he kicked himself lame in five minutes ;
but he ran out, and gave chase to Tom. Grimes upset
the soot-sack in the new-gravelled yard, and spoilt it all

utterly ; but he ran out, and gave chase to Tom. The
old steward opened the park-gate in such a hurry, that
he hung up his pony’s chin upon the spikes, and, for
aught I know, it hangs there still ; but he jumped off,
and gave chase to Tom. The ploughman left his
horses at the headland, and one jumped over the fence,

THE WATER-BABIES :

36

and pulled the other into the ditch, plough and all ; but
he ran on, and gave chase to Tom. The keeper, who
was taking a stoat out of a trap, let the stoat go, and
caught his own finger ; but he jumped up, and ran after
Tom ; and considering what he said, and how he looked,
I should have been sorry for Tom if he had caught him.

J o

Sir John looked out of his study window (for he was an
early old gentleman) and. up at the nurse, and a marten
dropped mud in his eye, so that he had at last to send
for the doctor ; and yet he ran out, and gave chase to
Tom. The Irishwoman, too, was walking up to the
house to beg, — she must have got round by some by¬
way, — but she threw away her bundle, and gave chase

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 37

to Tom likewise. Only my Lady did not give chase ; for
when she had put her head out of the window, her night-
wig fell into the garden, and she had to ring up her lady’s-
maid, and send her down for it privately, which quite
put her out of the running, so that she came in nowhere,
and is consequently not placed.

In a word, never was there heard at Hall Place —
not even when the fox was killed in the conservatory,
among acres of broken glass, and tons of smashed flower¬
pots — such a noise, row, hubbub, babel, shindy, hulla¬
baloo, stramash, charivari, and total contempt of dignity,
repose, and order, as that day, when Grimes, gardener,
the groom, the dairymaid, Sir John, the steward, the

3S THE WATER-BABIES:

ploughman, the keeper, and the Irishwoman, all ran up
the park, shouting “Stop thief," in the belief that I om
had at least a thousand pounds’ worth of jewels in his
empty pockets ; and the very magpies and jays followed
Tom up, screaking and screaming, as if he were a hunted
fox, beginning to droop his brush.

And all the while poor Tom paddled up the park
with his little bare feet, like a small black gorilla fleeing
to the forest. Alas for him ! there was no big father
gorilla therein to take his part — to scratch out the
gardener’s inside with one paw, toss the dairymaid into
a tree with another, and wrench off Sir John’s head with
a third, while he cracked the keeper’s skull with his

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

39

teeth as easily as if it had been a cocoa-nut or a paving-
stone.

However, I om did not remember ever having had

O

A

X

a father ; so he did not look for one, and expected to
have to take care of himself ; while as for running, he
could keep up for a couple of miles with any stage-coach,

40

THE WATER-BABIES :

if there was the chance of a copper or a cigar-end, and
turn coach-wheels on his hands and feet ten times fol¬
lowing, which is more than you can do. Wherefore his
pursuers found it very difficult to catch him ; and we
will hope that they did not catch him at all.

Tom, of course, made for the woods. He had never
been in a wood in his life ; but he was sharp enough to
know that he might hide in a bush, or swarm up a tree,
and, altogether, had more chance there than in the open.
If he had not known that, he would have been foolisher
than a mouse or a minnow.

But when he got into the wood, he found it a very
different sort of place from what he had fancied. He
pushed into a thick cover of rhododendrons, and found
himself at once caught in a trap. The boughs laid hold
of his legs and arms, poked him in his face and his
stomach, made him shut his eyes tight (though that was
no great loss, for he could not see at best a yard before
his nose) ; and when he got through the rhododendrons,
the hassock-grass and sedges tumbled him over, and cut
his poor little fingers afterwards most spitefully ; the
birches birched him as soundly as if he had been a
nobleman at Eton, and over the face too (which is not
fair swishing, as all brave boys will agree) ; and the

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 41

lawyers tripped him up, and tore his shins as if they
had sharks’ teeth — which lawyers are likely enough to
have.

“ I must get out of this, ” thought Tom, “or I shall
stay here till somebody comes to help me — which is just
what I don’t want.”

But how to get out was the difficult matter. And
indeed I don’t think he would ever have got out at all,
but have stayed there till the cock-robins covered him
with leaves, if he had not suddenly run his head against
a wall.

Now running your head against a wall is not pleasant,
especially if it is a loose wall, with the stones all set on
edge, and a sharp cornered one hits you between the
eyes and makes you see all manner of beautiful stars.
The stars are very beautiful, certainly ; but unfortunately
they go in the twenty-thousandth part of a split second,
and the pain which comes after them does not. And
so Tom hurt his head ; but he was a brave boy, and did
not mind that a penny. He guessed that over the wall
the cover would end ; and up it he went, and over like
a squirrel.

And there he was, out on the great grouse-moors,
which the country folk called Harthover Fell — heather

42 THE WATER-BABIES:

and bog and rock, stretching away and up, up to the
very sky.

Now, Tom was a cunning little fellow — as cunning
as an old Exmoor stag. Why not ? Though he was
but ten years old, he had lived longer than most stags,
and had more wits to start with into the bargain.

He knew as well as a stag that if he backed he might
throw the hounds out. So the first thing he did when
he was over the wall was to make the neatest double
sharp to his right, and run along under the wall for
nearly half a mile.

Whereby Sir John, and the keeper, and the steward,
and the gardener, and the ploughman, and the dairy¬
maid, and all the hue-and-cry together, went on ahead
half a mile in the very opposite direction, and inside the
wall, leaving him a mile off on the outside ; while Tom
heard their shouts die away in the wood, and chuckled
to himself merrily.

At last he came to a dip in the land, and went to
the bottom of it, and then he turned bravely away from
the wall, and up the moor ; for he knew that he had put
a hill between him and his enemies, and could go on
without their seeing him.

But the Irishwoman, alone of them all, had seen

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 43

which way Tom went. She had kept ahead of every
one the whole time ; and yet she neither walked nor
ran. She went along quite smoothly and gracefully,
while her feet twinkled past each other so fast that you
could not see which was foremost ; till every one asked
the other who the strange woman was ; and all agreed,
for want of anything better to say, that she must be in
league with Tom.

But when she came to the plantation, they lost sight
of her ; and they could do no less. For she went quietly
over the wall after Tom, and followed him wherever he
went. Sir John and the rest saw no more of her; and
out of sight was out of mind.

And now Tom was right away into the heather, over
just such a moor as those in which you have been bred,
except that there were rocks and stones lying about
everywhere, and that, instead of the moor growing flat
as he went upwards, it grew more and more broken and
hilly, but not so rough but that little Tom could jog
along well enough, and find time, too, to stare about at
the strange place, which was like a new world to him.

He saw great spiders there, with crowns and crosses
marked on their backs, who sat in the middle of their
webs, and when they saw Tom coming, shook them so

a rock, he saw a pretty sight— a great, brown, sharp-
nosed creature, with a white tag to her brush, and round
her four or five smutty little cubs, the funniest fellows
Tom ever saw. She lay on her back, rolling about, and
stretching out her legs and head and tail in the bright
sunshine; and the cubs jumped over her, and ran round

44 THE WATER-BABIES :

fast that they became invisible. Then he saw lizards,
brown and gray and green, and thought they were snakes,
and would sting him ; but they were as much frightened
as he, and shot away into the heath. And then, under

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 45

her, and nibbled her paws, and lugged her about by the
tail ; and she seemed to enjoy it mightily. But one
selfish little fellow stole away from the rest to a dead
crow close by, and dragged it off to hide it, though it
was nearly as big as he was. Whereat all his little
brothers set off after him in full cry, and saw Tom ; and
then all ran back, and up jumped Mrs. Vixen, and caught
one up in her mouth, and the rest toddled after her, and
into a dark crack in the rocks ; and there was an end of
the show.

And next he had a fright ; for, as he scrambled up a
sandy brow — whirr -poof- poof- cock -cock -kick — some¬
thing went off in his face, with a most horrid noise. He
thought the ground had blown up, and the end of the
world come.

And when he opened his eyes (for he shut them very
tight) it was only an old cock-grouse, who had been
washing himself in sand, like an Arab, for want of water ;
and who, when Tom had all but trodden on him, jumped
up with a noise like the express train, leaving his wife
and children to shift for themselves, like an old coward,
and went off, screaming “ Cur-ru-u-uck, cur-ru-u-uck —
murder, thieves, fire — cur-u-uck-cock-kick — the end of
the world is come — kick-kick-cock-kick.” He was always

46 THE WATER-BABIES:

fancying that the end of the world was come, when any¬
thing happened which was farther off than the end of
his own nose. But the end of the world was not come,
any more than the twelfth of August was ; though the
old grouse-cock was quite certain of it.

So the old grouse came back to his wife and family
an hour afterwards, and said solemnly, “ Cock-cock-kick ;
my dears, the end of the world is not quite come ; but
I assure you it is coming the day after to-morrow — cock.”
But his wife had heard that so often that she knew all
about it, and a little more. And, besides, she was the

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 47

mother of a family, and had seven little poults to wash
and feed every day ; and that made her very practical,
and a little sharp-tempered ; so all she answered was :
“ Kick-kick-kick — go and catch spiders, go and catch
spiders — kick.”

So Tom went on and on, he hardly knew why ; but
he liked the great wide strange place, and the cool
fresh bracing air. But he went more and more slowly
as he got higher up the hill ; for now the ground grew
very bad indeed. Instead of soft turf and springy
heather, he met great patches of flat limestone rock, just
like ill-made pavements, with deep cracks between the
stones and ledges, filled with ferns ; so he had to hop
from stone to stone, and now and then he slipped in
between, and hurt his little bare toes, though they were
tolerably tough ones ; but still he would go on and up,
he could not tell why.

What would Tom have said if he had seen, walking
over the moor behind him, the very same Irishwoman
who had taken his part upon the road ? But whether
it was that he looked too little behind him, or whether
it was that she kept out of sight behind the rocks and
knolls, he never saw her, though she saw him.

And now he began to get a little hungry, and very

48

THE WATER-BABIES:

thirsty ; for he had run a long way, and the sun had
risen high in heaven, and the rock was as hot as an
oven, and the air danced reels over it, as it does over a
limekiln, till everything round seemed quivering and
melting in the glare.

But he could see nothing to eat anywhere, and still
less to drink.

The heath was full of bilberries and whimberries ;
but they were only in flower yet, for it was June. And
as for water, who can find that on the top of a limestone
rock ? Now and then he passed by a deep dark
swallow-hole, going down into the earth, as if it was the
chimney of some dwarf’s house underground ; and more
than once, as he passed, he could hear water falling,
trickling, tinkling, many many feet below. How he
longed to get down to it, and cool his poor baked lips !
But, brave little chimney-sweep as he was, he dared not
climb down such chimneys as those.

So he went on and on, till his head spun round with
the heat, and he thought he heard church-bells ringing,
a long way off.

“Ah!" he thought, “where there is a church there
will be houses and people ; and, perhaps, some one will
give me a bit and a sup." So he set off again, to look

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 49

for the church ; for he was sure that he heard the bells
quite plain.

And in a minute more, when he looked round, he
stopped again, and said, “ Why, what a big place the
world is !”

And so it was ; for, from the top of the mountain he
could see — what could he not see ?

Behind him, far below, was Harthover, and the dark
woods, and the shining salmon river ; and on his left,
far below, was the town, and the smoking chimneys of
the collieries ; and far, far away, the river widened to the
shining sea ; and little white specks, which were ships,
lay on its bosom. Before him lay, spread out like a
map, great plains, and farms, and villages, amid dark
knots of trees. They all seemed at his very feet ; but
he had sense to see that they were long miles away.

And to his right rose moor after moor, hill after hill,
till they faded away, blue into blue sky. But between
him and those moors, and really at his very feet, lay
something, to which, as soon as Tom saw it, he deter¬
mined to go, for that was the place for him.

A deep, deep green and rocky valley, very narrow,
and filled with wood ; but through the wood, hundreds
of feet below him, he could see a clear stream glance.

E

5°

THE WATER-BABIES:

Oh, if lie could but get down to that stream ! Then,
by the stream, he saw the roof of a little cottage, and a
little garden set out in squares and beds. And there
was a tiny little red thing moving in the garden, no
bigger than a fly. As Tom looked down, he saw that
it was a woman in a red petticoat. Ah ! perhaps she
would give him something to eat. And there were the
church -bells ringing again. Surely there must be a
village down there. Well, nobody would know him, or
what had happened at the Place. The news could not
have got there yet, even if Sir John had set all the police¬
men in the county after him ; and he could get down
there in five minutes.

Tom was quite right about the hue-and-cry not having
got thither ; for he had come, without knowing it, the
best part of ten miles from Harthover ; but he was wrong
about orettinor down in five minutes, for the cottage was
more than a mile off, and a good thousand feet below.

However, down he went, like a brave little man as
he was, though he was very footsore, and tired, and
hungry, and thirsty ; while the church-bells rang so loud,
he began to think that they must be inside his own head,
and the river chimed and tinkled far below ; and this
was the song which it sang : —

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

By laughing shallow, and dreaming pool
Cool and clear , cool and clear,

By shining shingle , and foaming wear ;

52 THE WATER-BABIES:

Under the crag where the ouzel sings ,

A nd the ivied wall where the church-bell rings ,

Un defiled, for the undefiled ;

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

Dank and foul, dank and foul,

By the smoky town in its murky cowl ;

Foul and dank, foul and dank,

By wharf and sewer and slimy bank ;

Darker and darker the farther I go,

Baser and baser the richer I grow ;

Who dare sport with the sin-defiled?

Shrink from me, turn from me, mother and child.

Strong and free, strong and free,

The floodgates are open, azvay to the sea,

Free and strong, free and strong,

Cleansing my streams as I hurry along,

To the golden sands, and the leaping bar,

And the taintless tide that awaits me afar.

As I lose myself in the infinite main,

Like a soul that has sinned and is pardoned again.
Undefiled, for the undefiled ;

Play by me, bathe in me, mother and child.

“And is there care in heaven ? and is there love
In heavenly spirits to these creatures base
That may compassion of their evils move ?

There is : — else much more wretched were the case
Of men than beasts : But oh ! the exceeding grace
Of Highest God that loves His creatures so,

And all His works with mercy doth embrace,

That blessed Angels He sends to and fro,

To serve to wicked man, to serve His wicked foe !”

Spenser.

CHAPTER II.

> -\

is n

.<70-;

MILE off, and a
thousand feet down.

. - So Tom found

it ; though it seemed
as if he could have
chucked a pebble on to
the back of the woman
in the red petticoat who
was weeding in the gar¬
den, or even across the
dale to the rocks beyond.

For the bottom of
the valley was just one
field broad, and on the
other side ran the stream ; and above it, gray crag, gray
down, gray stair, gray moor walled up to heaven.

56 THE WATER-BABIES.

A quiet, silent, rich, happy place ; a narrow crack
cut deep into the earth ; so deep, and so out of the way,
that the bad bogies can hardly find it out. The name
of the place is Vendale ; and if you want to see it for
yourself, you must go up into the High Craven, and
search from Bolland Forest north by Ingleborough, to
the Nine Standards and Cross Fell ; and if you have
not found it, you must turn south, and search the Lake
Mountains, down to Scaw Fell and the sea; and then, if
you have not found it, you must go northward again by
merry Carlisle, and search the Cheviots all across, from
Annan Water to Berwick Law ; and then, whether you
have found Vendale or not, you will have found such a
country, and such a people, as ought to make you proud
of being a British boy.

So Tom went to go down ; and first he went down
three hundred feet of steep heather, mixed up with loose
brown gritstone, as rough as a file ; which was not plea¬
sant to his poor little heels, as he came bump, stump,
jump, down the steep. And still he thought he could
throw a stone into the garden.

Then he went down three hundred feet of lime¬
stone terraces, one below the other, as straight as if a
carpenter had ruled them with his ruler and then cut

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 57

them out with his chisel. There was no heath there,
but —

First, a little grass slope, covered with the prettiest
flowers, rockrose and saxifrage, and thyme and basil, and
all sorts of sweet herbs.

Then bump down a two-foot step of limestone.

Then another bit of grass and flowers.

Then bump down a one-foot step.

Then another bit of grass and flowers for fifty yards,
as steep as the house-roof, where he had to slide down
on his dear little tail.

Then another step of stone, ten feet high ; and there
he had to stop himself, and crawl along the edge to find
a crack ; for if he had rolled over, he would have rolled
right into the old woman’s garden, and frightened her
out of her wits.

Then, when he had found a dark narrow crack, full
of green-stalked fern, such as hangs in the basket in the
drawing-room, and had crawled down through it, with
knees and elbows, as he would down a chimney, there
was another grass slope, and another step, and so on,
till — oh, dear me ! I wish it was all over ; and so did
he. And yet he thought he could throw a stone into
the old woman’s garden.

58 THE WATER-BABIES:

At last he came to a bank of beautiful shrubs ; white-
beam with its great silver-backed leaves, and mountain-
ash, and oak ; and below them cliff and crag, cliff and
crag, with great beds of crown-ferns and wood-sedge ;
while through the shrubs he could see the stream spark¬
ling, and hear it murmur on the white pebbles. He did
not know that it was three hundred feet below.

You would have been giddy, perhaps, at looking
down : but Tom was not. He was a brave little
chimney-sweep ; and when he found himself on the top
of a high cliff, instead of sitting down and crying for his
baba (though he never had had any baba to cry for), he
said, “Ah, this will just suit me!” though he was very
tired ; and down he went, by stock and stone, sedge and
ledge, bush and rush, as if he had been born a jolly little
black ape, with four hands instead of two.

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman
coming down behind him.

But he was getting terribly tired now. The burning
sun on the fells had sucked him up ; but the damp heat
of the woody crag sucked him up still more ; and the
perspiration ran out of the ends of his fingers and toes,
and washed him cleaner than he had been for a whole
year. But, of course, he dirtied everything terribly as he

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

59

went. There has been a great black smudge all down
the crag ever since. And there have been more black
beetles in Vendale since than ever were known before;
all, of course, owing to Tom’s having blacked the original
papa of them all, just as he was setting off to be married,
with a sky-blue coat and scarlet leggings, as smart as a
gardener's dog with a polyanthus in his mouth.

At last he got to the bottom. But, behold, it was
not the bottom — as people usually find when they are
coming down a mountain. For at the foot of the crag
were heaps and heaps of fallen limestone of every size
from that of your head to that of a stage-waggon, with
holes between them full of sweet heath-fern ; and before
Tom got through them, he was out in the bright sun¬
shine again ; and then he felt, once for all and suddenly,
as people generally do, that he was b-e-a-t, beat.

You must expect to be beat a few times in your life,
little man, if you live such a life as a man ought to live,
let you be as strong and healthy as you may : and when
you are, you will find it a very ugly feeling. I hope
that that day you may have a stout staunch friend by
you who is not beat ; for, if you have not, you had best
lie where you are, and wait for better times, as poor
Tom did.

6o THE WATER-BABIES:

He could not get on. The sun was burning, and
yet he felt chill all over. He was quite empty, and yet
he felt quite sick. There was but two hundred yards
of smooth pasture between him and the cottage, and yet
he could not walk down it. He could hear the stream
murmuring only one field beyond it, and yet it seemed
to him as if it was a hundred miles off.

He lay down on the grass till the beetles ran over
him, and the flies settled on his nose. I don’t know
when he would have got up again, if the gnats and the
midges had not taken compassion on him. But the
gnats blew their trumpets so loud in his ear, and the
midges nibbled so at his hands and face wherever they
could find a place free from soot, that at last he woke
up, and stumbled away, down over a low wall, and into
a narrow road, and up to the cottage-door.

And a neat pretty cottage it was, with clipped yew
hedges all round the garden, and yews inside too, cut
into peacocks and trumpets and teapots and all kinds
of queer shapes. And out of the open door came a
noise like that of the frogs on the Great-A, when they
know that it is going to be scorching hot to-morrow —
and how they know that I don’t know, and you don’t
know, and nobody knows.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 61

He came slowly up to the open door, which was all
hung round with clematis and roses ; and then peeped
in, half afraid.

And there sat by the empty fireplace, which was
filled with a pot of sweet herbs, the nicest old woman
that ever was seen, in her red petticoat, and short dimity
bedgown, and clean white cap, with a black silk hand¬
kerchief over it, tied under her chin. At her feet sat the
grandfather of all the cats ; and opposite her sat, on two
benches, twelve or fourteen neat, rosy, chubby little
children, learning their Chris -cross -row ; and gabble
enough they made about it.

Such a pleasant cottage it was, with a shiny clean
stone floor, and curious old prints on the walls, and
an old black oak sideboard full of bright pewter and
brass dishes, and a cuckoo clock in the corner, which
began shouting as soon as Tom appeared : not that
it was frightened at Tom, but that it was just eleven
o’clock.

All the children started at Tom’s dirty black figure, —
the girls began to cry, and the boys began to laugh, and
all pointed at him rudely enough ; but Tom was too
tired to care for that.

“ What art thou, and what dost want ?” cried the old

62 THE WATER-BABIES:

dame. “A chimney-sweep! Away with thee! I’ll
have no sweeps here.”

“Water,” said poor little Tom, quite faint.

“Water ? There’s plenty i’ the beck,” she said, quite
sharply.

“ But I can’t get there ; I’m most clemmed with
hunger and drought.” And Tom sank down upon the
door-step, and laid his head against the post.

And the old dame looked at him through her
spectacles one minute, and two, and three ; and then she
said, “ He’s sick ; and a bairn’s a bairn, sweep or
none.”

“Water,” said Tom.

“God forgive me!” and she put by her spectacles,
and rose, and came to Tom. “Water’s bad for thee;
I’ll give thee milk.” And she toddled off into the next
room, and brought a cup of milk and a bit of bread.

Tom drank the milk off at one draught, and then
looked up, revived.

“Where didst come from ?” said the dame.

“Over Fell, there,” said Tom, and pointed up into
the sky.

“Over Harthover ? and down Lewth waite Crag?
Art sure thou art not lying ?”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND BABY. 63

“Why should I?” said Tom, and leant his head
against the post.

“ And how got ye up there ?”

“ I came over from the Place and Tom was so tired
and desperate he had no heart or time to think of a story,
so he told all the truth in a few words.

“ Bless thy little heart ! And thou hast not been
stealing, then ?”

“ No.”

“ Bless thy little heart! and I’ll warrant not. Why,
God’s guided the bairn, because he was innocent !
Away from the Place, and over Harthover Fell,
and down Lewthwaite Crag ! Who ever heard the
like, if God hadn’t led him ? Why dost not eat thy
bread ?”

“ I can’t.”

“ It’s good enough, for I made it myself."

“ I can’t,” said Tom, and he laid his head on his
knees, and then asked —

“ Is it Sunday ?”

“ No, then ; why should it be ?”

“ Because I hear the church-bells ringing so.”

“ Bless thy pretty heart ! The bairn’s sick. Come
wi’ me, and I’ll hap thee up somewhere. If thou wert a

6 4 THE WATER-BABIES:

bit cleaner I’d put thee in my own bed, for the Lord’s
sake. But come along here.”

But when Tom tried to get up, he was so tired and
giddy that she had to help him and lead him.

She put him in an outhouse upon soft sweet hay and

an old rug, and bade him sleep off his walk, and she

would come to him when school was over, in an hour’s
time.

And so she went in again, expecting Tom to fall
fast asleep at once.

But Tom did not fall asleep.

Instead of it he turned and tossed and kicked about

in the strangest way, and felt so hot all over that he

longed to get into the river and cool himself; and then
he fell half asleep, and dreamt that he heard the little
white lady crying to him, “ Oh, you’re so dirty ; go and
be washed;” and then that he heard the Irishwoman
saying, “ Those that wish to be clean, clean they will be.”
And then he heard the church-bells ring so loud, close
to him too, that he was sure it must be Sunday, in spite
of what the old dame had said ; and he would go to
church, and see what a church was like inside, for he had
never been in one, poor little fellow, in all his life. But
the people would never let him come in, all over soot

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

65

and dirt like that. He must go to the river and wash
first. And he said out loud again and again, though
being half asleep he did not know it, “ I must be
clean, I must be clean.”

And all of a sudden he found himself, not in the
outhouse on the hay, but in the middle of a meadow,
over the road, with the stream just before him, saying
continually, “ I must be clean, I must be clean.'’ He
had got there on his own legs, between sleep and awake,
as children will often get out of bed, and go about the
room, when they are not quite well. But he was not a
bit surprised, and went on to the bank of the brook, and
lay down on the grass, and looked into the clear, clear
limestone water, with every pebble at the bottom bright
and clean, while the little silver trout dashed about in
fright at the sight of his black face ; and he dipped his
hand in and found it so cool, cool, cool ; and he said,
“ I will be a fish ; I will swim in the water ; I must be
clean, I must be clean.”

So he pulled off all his clothes in such haste that he
tore some of them, which was easy enough with such
ragged old things. And he put his poor hot sore feet
into the water ; and then his legs ; and the farther he
went in, the more the church-bells rang in his head.

F

66 THE WATER-BABIES:

“Ah,” said Tom, “ I must be quick and wash myself ;
the bells are ringing quite loud now ; and they will stop
soon, and then the door will be shut, and I shall never
be able to get in at all.”

Tom was mistaken : for in England the church doors
are left open all service time, for everybody who likes to
come in, Churchman or Dissenter ; ay, even if he were
a Turk or a Heathen ; and if any man dared to turn
him out, as long as he behaved quietly, the good old
English law would punish that man, as he deserved, for
ordering any peaceable person out of God’s house, which
belongs to all alike. But Tom did not know that, any
more than he knew a great deal more which people ought
to know.

And all the while he never saw the Irishwoman, not
behind him this time, but before.

For just before he came to the river side, she had
stept down into the cool clear water ; and her shawl
and her petticoat floated off her, and the green water-
weeds floated round her sides, and the white water-lilies
floated round her head, and the fairies of the stream came
up from the bottom and bore her away and down upon
their arms ; for she was the Oueen of them all ; and
perhaps of more besides.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 67

“Where have you been ?” they asked her.

I have been smoothing sick folks’ pillows, and

whispering sweet dreams into their ears ; opening

68 THE WATER-BABIES:

cottage casements, to let out the stifling air ; coaxing
little children away from gutters, and foul pools where
fever breeds ; turning women from the gin-shop door,
and staying men’s hands as they were going to strike
their wives ; doing all I can to help those who will not
help themselves : and little enough that is, and weary
work for me. But I have brought you a new little
brother, and watched him safe all the way here.”

Then all the fairies laughed for joy at the thought that
they had a little brother coming.

“ But mind, maidens, he must not see you, or know
that you are here. He is but a savage now, and like
the beasts which perish ; and from the beasts which perish
he must learn. So you must not play with him, or speak
to him, or let him see you : but only keep him from
being harmed.”

Then the fairies were sad, because they could not
play with their new brother, but they always did what
they were told.

And their Queen floated away down the river ; and
whither she went, thither she came. But all this Tom,
of course, never saw or heard : and perhaps if he had it
would have made little difference in the story ; for he
was so hot and thirsty, and longed so to be clean for

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

69

once, that he tumbled himself as quick as he could into
the clear cool stream.

And he had not been in it two minutes before he fell
fast asleep, into the quietest, sunniest, cosiest sleep that
ever he had in his life ; and he dreamt about the green
meadows by which he had walked that morning, and the
tall elm-trees, and the sleeping cows ; and after that he
dreamt of nothing at all.

The reason of his falling into such a delightful sleep
is very simple ; and yet hardly any one has found it out.
It was merely that the fairies took him.

Some people think that there are no fairies. Cousin
Cramchild tells little folks so in his Conversations. Well,
perhaps there are none — in Boston, U.S., where he was
raised. There are only a clumsy lot of spirits there, who
can’t make people hear without thumping on the table :
but they get their living thereby, and I suppose that is
all they want. And Aunt Agitate, in her Arguments on
political economy, says there are none. Well, perhaps
there are none — in her political economy. But it is a
wide world, my little man — and thank Heaven for it, for
else, between crinolines and theories, some of us would
get squashed — and plenty of room in it for fairies, without
people seeing them ; unless, of course, they look in the

70 THE WATER-BABIES:

right place. The most wonderful and the strongest
things in the world, you know, are just the things which
no one can see. There is life in you ; and it is the life
in you which makes you grow, and move, and think :
and yet you can’t see it. And there is steam in a steam-
engine ; and that is what makes it move : and yet you
can’t see it ; and so there may be fairies in the world,
and they may be just what makes the world go round
to the old tune of

“ C'est 1' amour, r amour , /’ 'amour
Qui fait la monde a la ronde /”

and yet no one may be able to
see them except those whose
hearts are going round to that
same tune. At all events, we
will make believe that there are
fairies in the world. It will not
be the last time by many a one
that we shall have to make be¬
lieve. And yet, after all, there
is no need lor that. There must be fairies ; for this
is a fairy tale : and how can one have a fairy tale if
there are no fairies ?

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 71

You don’t see the logic of that ? Perhaps not. Then
please not to see the logic of a great many arguments
exactly like it, which you will hear before your beard
is gray.

The kind old dame came back at twelve, when school
was over, to look at Tom : but there was no Tom there.
She looked about for his footprints ; but the ground was
so hard that there was no slot, as they say in dear old
North Devon. And if you grow up to be a brave
healthy man, you may know some day what no slot
means, and know too, I hope, what a slot does mean —
a broad slot, with blunt claws, which makes a man put
out his cigar, and set his teeth, and tighten his girths,
when he sees it ; and what his rights mean, if he has
them, brow, bay, tray, and points ; and see something
worth seeing between H addon Wood and Countisbury
Cliff, with good Mr. Palk Colly ns to show you the way,
and mend your bones as fast as you smash them. Only
when that jolly day comes, please don’t break your neck :
stogged in a mire you never will be, I trust ; for you are
a heath-cropper bred and born.

So the old dame went in again quite sulky, thinking
that little Tom had tricked her with a false story, and
shammed ill, and then run away again.

7 2 THE WATER-BABIES:

But she altered her mind the next day. For, when
Sir John and the rest of them had run themselves out of
breath, and lost Tom, they went back again, looking
very foolish.

And they looked more foolish still when Sir John
heard more of the story from the nurse ; and more
foolish still, again, when they heard the whole story
from Miss Ellie, the little lady in white. All she had
seen was a poor little black chimney-sweep, crying and
sobbing, and going to get up the chimney again. Of
course, she was very much frightened : and no wonder.
But that was all. The boy had taken nothing in the
room ; by the mark of his little sooty feet, they could see
that he had never been off the hearthrug till the nurse
caught hold of him. It was all a mistake.

So Sir John told Grimes to go home, and promised
him five shillings if he would bring the boy quietly up
to him, without beating him, that he might be sure of
the truth. For he took for granted, and Grimes too,
that Tom had made his way home.

But no Tom came back to Mr. Grimes that evening;
and he went to the police-office, to tell them to look out
for the boy. But no Tom was heard of. As for his
having gone over those great fells to Vendale, they no

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

73

more dreamed of that than of his having gone to the
moon.

So Mr. Grimes came up to Harthover next day with
a very sour face ; but when he got there, Sir John was
over the hills and far away ; and Mr. Grimes had to sit
in the outer servants’ hall all day, and drink strong ale
to wash away his sorrows ; and they were washed away
long before Sir John came back.

For good Sir John had slept very badly that night ;
and he said to his lady, “ My dear, the boy must have
got over into the grouse -moors, and lost himself ; and
he lies very heavily on my conscience, poor little lad.
But 1 know what I will do.”

So, at five the next morning up he got, and into his
bath, and into his shooting-jacket and gaiters, and into
the stableyard, like a fine old English gentleman, with a
face as red as a rose, and a hand as hard as a table, and
a back as broad as a bullock’s ; and bade them bring his
shooting pony, and the keeper to come on his pony, and
the huntsman, and the first whip, and the second whip,
and the under-keeper with the bloodhound in a leash —
a great dog as tall as a calf, of the colour of a gravel-
walk, with mahogany ears and nose, and a throat like a
church-bell. They took him up to the place where 1 om

74

THE WATER-BABIES :

had gone into the wood ; and there the hound lifted up
his mighty voice, and told them all he knew.

Then he took them to the place where Tom had
climbed the wall ; and they shoved it down, and all got
through.

came to the top of Lewthwaite

And then the wise

dogf took them over
<_>

the moor, and over
the fells, step by step,
very slowly ; for the
scent was a day old,
you know, and very
light from the heat
and drought. But
that was why cunning
old Sir John started
at five in the morn¬
ing.

And at last he
Crag, and there he

bayed, and looked up in their faces, as much as to say,
“ I tell you he is gone down here !”

They could hardly believe that Tom would have
gone so far ; and when they looked at that awful cliff,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

75

they could never believe that he would have dared to
face it. But if the dog said so, it must be true.

“Heaven forgive us!” said Sir John. “If we find
him at all, we shall find him lying at the bottom." And
he slapped his great hand upon his great thigh, and
said —

“Who will go down over Lewthwaite Crag, and see
if that boy is alive ? Oh that I were twenty years
younger, and I would go down myself!” And so he
would have done, as well as any sweep in the county.
Then he said —

“Twenty pounds to the man who brings me that boy
alive!” and as was his way, what he said he meant.

Now among the lot was a little groom-boy, a very
little groom indeed ; and he was the same who had
ridden up the court, and told Tom to come to the Hall ;
and he said —

“Twenty pounds or none, I will go down over
Lewthwaite Crag, if it’s only for the poor boy’s sake.
For he was as civil a spoken little chap as ever climbed
a flue.”

So dowm over Lewthwaite Crag he went : a very
smart groom he was at the top, and a very shabby one
at the bottom ; for he tore his gaiters, and he tore his

76 THE WATER-BABIES:

breeches, and he tore his jacket, and he burst his braces,
and he burst his boots, and he lost his hat, and what was
worst of all, he lost his shirt pin, which he prized very
much, for it was gold, and he had won it in a raffle at
Malton, and there was a figure at the top of it, of t’ould
mare, noble old Beeswing herself, as natural as life ; so it
was a really severe loss : but he never saw anything of
Tom.

And all the while Sir John and the rest were riding
round, full three miles to the right, and back again, to get
into Vendale, and to the foot of the crag.

When they came to the old dame’s school, all the
children came out to see. And the old dame came out
too ; and when she saw Sir John she curtsied very low,
for she was a tenant of his.

“Well, dame, and how are you ?” said Sir John.

“ Blessings on you as broad as your back, Harthover,”
says she — she didn’t call him Sir John, but only Harth¬
over, for that is the fashion in the North country — “and
welcome into Vendale : but you’re no hunting the fox
this time of the year ?”

“ I am hunting, and strange game too,” said he.

“ Blessings on your heart, and what makes you look
so sad the morn ?”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 77

“ I’m looking for a lost child, a chimney-sweep, that
is run away.”

“Oh, Harthover, Harthover,” says she, “ye were
always a just man and a merciful ; and ye’ll no harm the
poor little lad if I give you tidings of him ?”

“ Not I, not I, dame. I’m afraid we hunted him out
of the house all on a miserable mistake, and the hound
has brought him to the top of Lewthwaite Crag, and - ”

Whereat the old dame broke out crying, without
letting him finish his story.

“So he told me the truth after all, poor little dear!
Ah, first thoughts are best, and a body’s heart’ll guide
them right, if they will but hearken to it.” And then
she told Sir John all.

“ Bring the dog here, and lay him on,” said Sir John,
without another word, and he set his teeth very hard.

And the dog opened at once ; and went away at the
back of the cottage, over the road, and over the meadow,
and through a bit of alder copse ; and there, upon an
alder stump, they saw Tom’s clothes lying. And then
they knew as much about it all as there was any need
to know.

And Tom ?

Ah, now comes the most wonderful part of this won-

7 8 THE WATER-BABIES:

derful story. Tom, when he woke, for of course he
woke — children always wake after they have slept exactly
as long as is good for them — found himself swimming
about in the stream, being about four inches, or — that I
may be accurate — 3*87902 inches long, and having round
the parotid region of his fauces a set of external gills (1
hope you understand all the big words) just like those
of a sucking eft, which he mistook for a lace frill, till he
pulled at them, found he hurt himself, and made up his
mind that they were part of himself, and best left alone.

In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.

A water-baby ? You never heard of a water-baby.
Perhaps not. That is the very reason why this story
was written. There are a great many things in the
world which you never heard of ; and a great many more
which nobody ever heard of ; and a great many things,
too, which nobody will ever hear of, at least until the
coming of the Cocqcigrues, when man shall be the
measure of all things.

“ But there are no such things as water-babies.”

How do you know that ? Have you been there to
see ? And if you had been there to see, and had seen
none, that would not prove that there were none. If Mr..
Garth does not find a fox in Eversley Wood — as folks

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 79

sometimes fear he never will — that does not prove that
there are no such things as foxes. And as is Eversley
Wood to all the woods in England, so are the waters we
know to all the waters in the world. And no one has a
right to say that no water -babies exist, till they have

seen no water-babies existing ; which is quite a different
thing, mind, from not seeing water-babies; and a thing
which nobody ever did, or perhaps ever will do.

“ But surely if there were water-babies, somebody
would have caught one at least ?”

So THE WATER-BABIES:

Well. How do you know that somebody has not ?

“ But they would have put it into spirits, or into the
I Ihistratcd News , or perhaps cut it into two halves, poor
dear little thing, and sent one to Professor Owen, and
one to Professor Huxley, to see what they would each
say about it."

Ah, my dear little man ! that does not follow at all,
as you will see before the end of the story.

“ But a water-baby is contrary to nature.”

Well, but, my dear little man, you must learn to talk
about such things, when you grow older, in a very differ¬
ent way from that. You must not talk about “ain’t”
and “can’t” when you speak of this great wonderful
world round you, of which the wisest man knows only

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 8r

the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac
Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the
shore of a boundless ocean.

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is
contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is,
or what she can do ; and nobody knows ; not even Sir
Roderick Murchison, or Professor Owen, or Professor
Sedgwick, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or
Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the
great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They
are very wise men ; and you must listen respectfully to
all they say : but even if they should say, which I am
sure they never would, “ That cannot exist. That is
contrary to nature,” you must wait a little, and see ; for
perhaps even they may be wrong. It is only children
who read Aunt Agitate’s Arguments, or Cousin Cram-
child’s Conversations ; or lads who go to popular lectures,
and see a man pointing at a few big ugly pictures on the
wall, or making nasty smells with bottles and squirts, for
an hour or two, and calling that anatomy or chemistry —
who talk about “cannot exist,’’ and “contrary to nature. ’
W ise men are afraid to say that there is anything con¬
trary to nature, except what is contrary to mathematical
truth ; for two and two cannot make five, and two straight

o

82

THE WATER-BABIES :

lines cannot join twice, and a part cannot be as great as
the whole, and so on (at least, so it seems at present) :
but the wiser men are, the less they talk about “ cannot.’’
That is a very rash, dangerous word, that “ cannot and
if people use it too often, the Queen of all the Fairies,
who makes the clouds thunder and the fleas bite, and
takes just as much trouble about one as about the other,
is apt to astonish them suddenly by showing them, that
though they say she cannot, yet she can, and what is
more, will, whether they approve or not.

And therefore it is, that there are dozens and hundreds
of things in the world which we should certainly have
said were contrary to nature, if we did not see them going
on under our eyes all day long. If people had never
seen little seeds grow into great plants and trees, of quite
different shape from themselves, and these trees again
produce fresh seeds, to grow into fresh trees, they would
have said, “ The thing cannot be ; it is contrary to
nature.” And they would have been quite as right in
saying so, as in saying that most other things cannot be.

Or suppose again, that you had come, like M. Du
Chaillu, a traveller from unknown parts ; and that no
human being had ever seen or heard of an elephant.
And suppose that you described him to people, and said,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

§3

“ This is the shape, and plan, and anatomy of the beast,
and of his feet, and of his trunk, and of his grinders, and
of his tusks, though they are not tusks at all, but two fore
teeth run mad ; and this is the section of his skull, more
like a mushroom than a reasonable skull of a reasonable
or unreasonable beast ; and so forth, and so forth ; and
though the beast (which I assure you I have seen and
shot) is first cousin to the little hairy coney of Scripture,
second cousin to a pig, and (I suspect) thirteenth or
fourteenth cousin to a rabbit, yet he is the wisest of all
beasts, and can do everything save read, write, and cast
accounts.'’ People would surely have said, “ Nonsense ;
your elephant is contrary to nature;’’ and have thought
you were telling stories — as the French thought of Le
Vaillant when he came back to Paris and said that he had
shot a giraffe ; and as the king of the Cannibal Islands
thought of the English sailor, when he said that in his
country water turned to marble, and rain fell as feathers.
They would tell you, the more they knew of science,
“ Your elephant is an impossible monster, contrary to the
laws of comparative anatomy, as far as yet known.” To
which you would answer the less, the more you thought.

Did not learned men, too, hold, till within the last
twenty-five years, that a Hying dragon was an impossible

84 THE WATER-BABIES:

monster ? And do we not now know that there are
hundreds of them found fossil up and down the world ?
People call them Pterodactyles : but that is only because
they are ashamed to call them flying dragons, after deny¬
ing so long that flying dragons could exist.

The truth is, that folks’ fancy that such and such
things cannot be, simply because they have not seen them,
is worth no more than a savage’s fancy that there cannot
be such a thing as a locomotive, because he never saw
one running wild in the forest. Wise men know that
their business is to examine what is, and not to settle
what is not. They know that there are elephants ; they
know that there have been flying dragons ; and the wiser
they are, the less inclined they will be to say positively
that there are no water-babies.

No water-babies, indeed ? Why, wise men of old
said that everything on earth had its double in the water ;
and you may see that that is, if not quite true, still quite
as true as most other theories which you are likely to
hear for many a day. There are land-babies — then why
not water-babies ? Are there not water-rats , water -flies ,
water-crickets , water-crabs , water-tortoises , water-scorpions ,
water-tigers and water-hogs , water-cats and water-dogs ,
sea-lions and sea-bears , sea-horses and sea-elephants , sea-

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 85

mice and sea-urchins , sea-razors and sea-pens , sea-combs
and sea-fans ; and of plants, are there not water-grass ,
and water -crowfoot, water -milfoil, and so on, without
end ?

“ But all these things are only nicknames ; the water
things are not really akin to the land things.”

That’s not always true. They are, in millions of
cases, not only of the same family, but actually the same
individual creatures. Do not even you know that a
green drake, and an alder -fly, and a dragon-fly, live
under water till they change their skins, just as Tom
changed his ? And if a water animal can continually
change into a land animal, why should not a land animal
sometimes change into a water animal ? Don’t be put
down by any of Cousin Cramchild’s arguments, but stand
up to him like a man, and answer him (quite respectfully,
of course) thus : —

If Cousin Cramchild says, that if there are water-
babies, they must grow into water-men, ask him how he
knows that they do not ? and then, how he knows that
they must, any more than the Proteus of the Adelsberg
caverns grows into a perfect newt.

If he says that it is too strange a transformation for
a land-baby to turn into a water-baby, ask him if he ever

86 THE WATER-BABIES:

heard of the transformation of Syllis, or the Distomas, or
the common jelly-fish, of which M. Ouatrefages says
excellently well — “Who would not exclaim that a miracle
had come to pass, if he saw a reptile come out of the egg
dropped by the hen in his poultry-yard, and the reptile
ofive birth at once to an indefinite number of fishes and

o

birds ? Yet the history of the jelly-fish is quite as
wonderful as that would be." Ask him if he knows
about all this ; and if he does not, tell him to go and
look for himself ; and advise him (very respectfully, of
course) to settle no more what strange things cannot
happen, till he has seen what strange things do happen
every day.

If he says that things cannot degrade, that is, change
downwards into lower forms, ask him, who told him that
water-babies were lower than land-babies ? But even if
they were, does he know about the strange degradation
of the common goose-barnacles, which one finds sticking
on ships’ bottoms ; or the still stranger degradation of
some cousins of theirs, of which one hardly likes to talk,
so shocking and ugly it is ?

And, lastly, if he says (as he most certainly will) that
these transformations only take place in the lower
animals, and not in the higher, say that that seems to

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 87

little boys, and to some grown people, a very strange
fancy. For if the changes of the lower animals are so
wonderful, and so difficult to discover, why should not
there be changes in the higher animals far more wonder¬
ful, and far more difficult to discover ? And may not
man, the crown and flower of all things, undergo some
change as much more wonderful than all the rest, as the
Great Exhibition is more wonderful than a rabbit-burrow?
Let him answer that. And if he says (as he will) that
not having seen such a change in his experience, he is
not bound to believe it, ask him respectfully, where his
microscope has been ? Does not each of us, in coming
into this world, go through a transformation just as
wonderful as that of a sea-egg, or a butterfly ? and do
not reason and analogy, as well as Scripture, tell us that
that transformation is not the last ? and that, though
what we shall be, we know not, yet we are here but as
the crawling caterpillar, and shall be hereafter as the
perfect fly. The old Greeks, heathens as they were, saw
as much as that two thousand years ago ; and I care very
little for Cousin Cramchild, if he sees even less than they.
And so forth, and so forth, till he is quite cross. And
then tell him that if there are no water-babies, at least
there oueht to be ; and that, at least, he cannot answer.

88

THE WATER-BABIES :

And meanwhile, my dear little man, till you know a
great deal more about nature than Professor Owen and
Professor Huxley put together, don’t tell me about what
cannot be, or fancy that anything is too wonderful to be
true. “ We are fearfully and wonderfully made,” said old
David ; and so we are ; and so is every thing around us,
down to the very deal table. Yes ; much more fearfully
and wonderfully made, already, is the table, as it stands
now, nothing but a piece of dead deal wood, than if, as
foxes say, and geese believe, spirits could make it dance,
or talk to you by rapping on it.

Am I in earnest ? Oh dear no ! Don’t you know
that this is a fairy tale, and all fun and pretence ; and
that you are not to believe one word of it, even if it is
true ?

But at all events, so it happened to Tom. And, there¬
fore, the keeper, and the groom, and Sir John made a
great mistake, and were very unhappy (Sir John at least)
without any reason, when they found a black thing in the
water, and said it was Tom’s body, and that he had been
drowned. They were utterly mistaken. Tom was quite
alive ; and cleaner, and merrier, than he ever had been.
The fairies had washed him, you see, in the swift river,
so thoroughly, that not only his dirt, but his whole husk

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 89

and shell had been washed quite off him, and the pretty
little real Torn was washed out of the inside of it, and
swam away, as a caddis does when its case of stones and
silk is bored through, and away it goes on its back,
paddling to the shore, there to split its skin, and fly away
as a caperer, on four fawn-coloured wings, with long legs
and horns. They are foolish fellows, the caperers, and fly
into the candle at night, if you leave the door open. W e
will hope Tom will be wiser, now he has got safe out of
his sooty old shell.

But good Sir John did not understand all this, not
being a fellow of the Linnsean Society ; and he took it
into his head that Tom was drowned. When they
looked into the empty pockets of his shell, and found no
jewels there, nor money — nothing but three marbles, and
a brass button with a string to it — then Sir John did
something as like crying as ever he did in his life, and
blamed himself more bitterly than he need have done.
So he cried, and the groom-boy cried, and the huntsman
cried, and the dame cried, and the little girl cried, and
the dairymaid cried, and the old nurse cried (for it was
somewhat her fault), and my lady cried, for though people
have wigs, that is no reason why they should not have
hearts : but the keeper did not cry, though he had been

9°

THE WATER-BABIES :

so good-natured to Tom the morning before; for he was
so dried up with running after poachers, that you could
no more £et tears out of him than milk out of leather :
and Grimes did not cry, for Sir John gave him ten
pounds, and he drank it all in a week. Sir John sent,
far and wide, to find Tom’s father and mother: but he
might have looked till Doomsday for them, for one was
dead, and the other was in Botany Bay. And the little
girl would not play with her dolls for a whole week, and
never forgot poor little Tom. And soon my lady put a
pretty little tombstone over Tom’s shell in the little
churchyard in Vendale, where the old dalesmen all sleep
side by side between the limestone crags. And the dame
decked it with garlands every Sunday, till she grew so
old that she could not stir abroad ; then the little children
decked it for her. And always she sang an old old song,
as she sat spinning what she called her wedding-dress.
The children could not understand it, but they liked it
none the less for that ; for it was very sweet, and very
sad ; and that was enough for them. And these are the
words of it : —

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

HEN all the world
is young, /ad,

4 nd all the trees are preen •
4 nd every goose a swan, lad \
n And every lass a
queen ;

or boot and horse , lad ,
And round the world away;
Young blood must have its course, lad,

A nd every dog his day.

92

THE WATER-BABIES:

When all the world is old , lad \

And all the trees are brown ;

A nd all the sport is stale , lad ,

A nd all the wheels run down ;
Creep home , and take your place there ,
The spent and maimed among ;

God grant you find one face there ,
You loved when all was young.

Those are the words : but they are only the body of
it : the soul of the song was the dear old woman’s sweet
face, and sweet voice, and the sweet old air to which she

\ FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY,

93

sang ; and that, alas ! one cannot put on paper. And at
last she grew so stiff and lame, that the angels were
forced to carry her ; and they helped her on with her
wedding-dress, and carried her up over Harthover Fells,
and a long way beyond that too ; and there was a new
schoolmistress in Vendale, and we will hope that she was
not certificated.

And all the while Tom was swimming about in the
river, with a pretty little lace-collar of gills about his neck,
as lively as a grig, and as clean as a fresh-run salmon.

Now if you don’t like my story, then go to the school¬
room and learn your multiplication-table, and see if you
like that better. Some people, no doubt, would do so.
So much the better for us, if not for them. It takes all
sorts, they say, to make a world.

“ He prayeth well who loveth well
Both men and bird and beast ;
He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small :
For the dear God who loveth us,
He made and loveth all.”

Coleridge.

CHAPTER III

OM was now quite amphibious.
You do not know what that
means ? You had better,
then, ask the nearest
Government pupil-teacher, who
\. may possibly answer you smartly
enough, thus —

“ Amphibious. Adjective,
derived from two Greek words,
amphi , a fish, and bios, a beast. An animal supposed
by our ignorant ancestors to be compounded of a fish
and a beast ; which therefore, like the hippopotamus,
can't live on the land, and dies in the water.”

However that may be, Tom was amphibious : and
what is better still, he was clean. For the first time in
his life, he felt how comfortable it was to have nothing

96 THE WATER-BABIES :

on him but himself. But he only enjoyed it : he did not
know it, or think about it ; just as you enjoy life and
health, and vet never think about bein^ alive and

j

healthy ; and may it be long before you have to think
about it !

He did not remember having ever been dirty. Indeed,
he did not remember any of his old troubles, being tired,
or hungry, or beaten, or sent up dark chimneys. Since
that sweet sleep, he had forgotten all about his master,
and Harthover Place, and the little white girl, and in a
word, all that had happened to him when he lived before;
and what was best of all, he had forgotten all the bad
words which he had learned from Grimes, and the rude
boys with whom he used to play.

That is not strange : for you know, when you came
into this world, and became a land-baby, you remembered
nothing. So why should he, when he became a water-
baby ?

Then have you lived before ?

My dear child, who can tell ? One can only tell
that, by remembering something which happened where
we lived before ; and as we remember nothing, we know
nothing about it ; and no book, and no man, can ever
tell us certainly.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

There was a wise man once, a very wise man, and a
very good man, who wrote a poem about the feelings
which some children have about having lived before ;
and this is what he said —

“ Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting ;

The soul that rises with us, our life's star ,

Hath elsewhere had its setting.

And cometh from afar :

Not in entire forgetfulness ,

A nd not in utter nakedness,

Blit trailing clouds of glory, do we come
From God , who is our homed

There, you can know no more than that. But if 1
was you, I would believe that. For then the great fairy
Science, who is likely to be queen of all the fairies for
many a year to come, can only do you good, and never
do you harm ; and instead of fancying, with some people,
that your body makes your soul, as if a steam-engine
could make its own coke ; or, with some people, that
your soul has nothing to do with your body, but is only

ii

98 THE WATER-BABIES:

stuck into it like a pin into a pincushion, to fall out with
the first shake ; — you will believe the one true,

orthodox ,
rational ,
philosophical ,

inductive ,
deductive ,
seductive ,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 99

logical , productive ,

irrefragable , salutary ,

noni inalistic , comfortable ,

realistic ,

and on-all-accounts-to-be-received

doctrine of this wonderful fairy tale ; which is, that your
soul makes your body, just as a snail makes his shell.
For the rest, it is enough for us to be sure that whether
or not we lived before, we shall live again ; though not,
I hope, as poor little heathen Tom did. For he went
downward into the water : but we, I hope, shall go
upward to a very different place.

But Tom was very happy in the water. He had
been sadly overworked in the land-world ; and so now,
to make up for that, he had nothing but holidays in the
water- world for a long, long time to come. He had
nothing to do now but enjoy himself, and look at all
the pretty things which are to be seen in the cool clear
water -world, where' the sun is never too hot, and the
frost is never too cold.

And what did he live on ? Water-cresses, perhaps ;
or perhaps water-gruel, and water- milk ; too many land-
babies do so likewise. But we do not know what one-

tenth of the water-things eat ; so we are not answerable
for the water-babies.

Sometimes he went along the smooth gravel water¬
ways, looking at the crickets which ran in and out among
the stones, as rabbits do on land ; or he climbed over
the ledges of rock, and saw the sand -pipes hanging in
thousands, with every one of them a pretty little head
and legs peeping out ; or he
went into a still corner, and
watched the caddises eating
dead sticks as greedily as you
would eat plum -pudding, and
building their houses with silk
and glue. Very fanciful ladies
they were ; none of them would
keep to the same materials for
a day. One would begin with
some pebbles ; then she would stick on a piece of green
wood ; then she found a shell, and stuck it on too ; and
the poor shell was alive, and did not like at all being taken
to build houses with : but the caddis did not let him have
any voice in the matter, being rude and selfish, as vain
people are apt to be ; then she stuck on a piece ol rotten
wood, then a very smart pink stone, and so on, till she was

102 THE WATER-BABIES:

patched all over like an Irishman’s coat. Then she found a
long straw, five times as long as herself, and said, “Hurrah !
my sister has a tail, and I’ll have one too;” and she
stuck it on her back, and marched about with it quite
proud, though it was very inconvenient indeed. And,

at that, tails became all the fashion among
the caddis-baits in that pool, as they were
at the end of the Long Pond last May,
and they all toddled about with long
straws sticking out behind, getting be¬
tween each other’s legs, and tumbling
over each other, and looking so ridiculous,
that Tom laughed at them till he cried, as
we did. But they were quite right, you
know ; for people must always follow the
fashion, even if it be spoon-bonnets.

Then sometimes he came to a deep
still reach ; and there he saw the water-
forests. They would have looked to you only little
weeds : but Tom, you must remember, was so little that
everything looked a hundred times as big to him as it
does to you, just as things do to a minnow, who sees and
catches the little water-creatures which you can only see
in a microscope.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

103

And in the water-forest he saw the water-monkeys
and water-squirrels (they had all six legs, though ; every¬
thing almost has six legs in the water, except efts and
water-babies) ; and nimbly enough they ran among the
branches. There were water-flowers there too, in thou¬
sands ; and Tom tried to pick them : but as soon as he
touched them, they drew themselves in and turned into
knots of jelly ; and then Tom saw that they were all
alive — bells, and stars, and wheels, and flowers, of all
beautiful shapes and colours ; and all alive and busy, just
as Tom was. So now he found that there was a great
deal more in the world than he had fancied at first sight.

There was one wonderful little fellow, too, who peeped
out of the top of a house built of round bricks. He had
two big wheels, and one little one, all over teeth, spinning
round and round like the wheels in a thrashing-machine ;
and Tom stood and stared at him, to see what he was
going to make with his machinery. And what do you
think he was doing ? Brick-making. With his two big
wheels he swept together all the mud which floated in
the water : all that was nice in it he put into his stomach
and ate ; and all the mud he put into the little wheel on
his breast, which really was a round hole set with teeth ;
and there he spun it into a neat hard round brick ; and

io4 THE WATER-BABIES:

then he took it and stuck it on the top of his house- wall,
and set to work to make another. Now was not he a
clever little fellow ?

Tom thought so : but when he wanted to talk to him,
the brick-maker was much too busy and proud of his
work to take notice of him.

Now you must know that all the things under the
water talk ; only not such a language as ours ; but such
as horses, and dogs, and cows, and birds talk to each
other ; and Tom soon learned to understand them and
talk to them ; so that he might have had very pleasant
company if he had only been a good boy. But I am
sorry to say, he was too like some other little boys, very
fond of hunting and tormenting creatures for mere sport.
Some people say that boys cannot help it ; that it is
nature, and only a proof that we are all originally
descended from beasts of prey. But whether it is nature
or not, little boys can help it, and must help it. For if
they have naughty, low, mischievous tricks in their nature,
as monkeys have, that is no reason why they should give
way to those tricks like monkeys, who know no better.
And therefore they must not torment dumb creatures ;
for if they do, a certain old lady who is coming will surely
give them exactly what they deserve.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 105

But Tom did not know that ; and he pecked and
howked the poor water -things about sadly, till they
were all afraid of him, and got out of his way, or crept
into their shells ; so he had no one to speak to or play
with.

The water-fairies, of course, were very sorry to see
him so unhappy, and longed to take him, and tell him
how naughty he was, and teach him to be good, and to
play and romp with him too : but they had been forbidden
to do that. Tom had to learn his lesson for himself by
sound and sharp experience, as many another foolish
person has to do, though there may be many a kind
heart yearning over them all the while, and longing to
teach them what they can only teach themselves.

At last one day he found a caddis, and wanted it to
peep out of its house : but its house-door was shut. He
had never seen a caddis with a house-door before : so
what must he do, the meddlesome little fellow, but pull it
open, to see what the poor lady was doing inside. What
a shame ! How should you like to have any one break-
ing your bedroom-door in, to see how you looked when
you were in bed ? So Tom broke to pieces the door,
which was the prettiest little grating of silk, stuck all
over with shining bits of crystal ; and when he looked in,

i o6 THE WATER-BABIES:

the caddis poked out her head, and it had turned into
just the shape of a bird's. But when Tom spoke to her
she could not answer ; for her mouth and face were tight
tied up in a new night-cap of neat pink skin. However,
if she didn’t answer, all the other caddises did ; for they
held up their hands and shrieked like the cats in Struwel-
peter : “ Oh , you nasty horrid boy ; there you are at it
again ! A nd she had just laid herself up for a fort¬
night' s sleep , and then she would have come out with such
beautiful wings , and flown about , and laid such lots of
eggs and now you have broken her door , and she caiit
me7id it because her mouth is tied up for a fortnight ,
and she zvill die. Who sent you here to worry us out oj
our lives ? ”

So Tom swam away. He was very much ashamed
of himself, and felt all the naughtier ; as little boys do
when they have done wrong and won’t say so.

Then he came to a pool full of little trout, and began
tormenting them, and trying to catch them : but they
slipped through his fingers, and jumped clean out of water
in their fright. But as Tom chased them, he came close
to a great dark hover under an alder root, and out
floushed a huge old brown trout ten times as big as he
was, and ran right against him, and knocked all the

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 107

breath out of his body ; and I don't know which was the
more frightened of the two.

Then he went on sulky and lonely, as he deserved to
be ; and under a bank he saw a very ugly dirty creature
sitting, about half as big as himself; which had six legs,

and a big stomach, and a most ridiculous head with two
great eyes and a face just like a donkey’s.

“ Oh,” said Tom, “ you are an ugly fellow to be sure!”
and he began making faces at him ; and put his nose
close to him, and halloed at him, like a very rude boy.

When, hey presto ! all the thing’s donkey-face came

10S THE WATER-BABIES:

off in a moment, and out popped a long arm with a pair
of pincers at the end of it, and caught Tom by the nose.
It did not hurt him much ; but it held him quite tight.

“Yah, ah ! Oh, let me go !” cried Tom.

“ Then let me go,” said the creature. “ I want to be
quiet. I want to split.”

Tom promised to let him alone, and he let go.
“Why do you want to split ?” said Tom.

“ Because my brothers and sisters have all split, and
turned into beautiful creatures with wings ; and I want
to split too. Don’t speak to me. I am sure I shall split.
I will split!”

Tom stood still, and watched him. And he swelled
himself, and puffed, and stretched himself out stiff, and
at last — crack, puff, bang — he opened all down his back,
and then up to the top of his head.

And out of his inside came the most slender, elegant,
soft creature, as soft and smooth as Tom : but very pale
and weak, like a little child who has been ill a long time
in a dark room. It moved its legs very feebly ; and
looked about it half ashamed, like a girl when she goes
for the first time into a ballroom ; and then it began
walking slowly up a grass stem to the top of the water.

Tom was so astonished that he never said a word :

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

but he stared with all his eyes. And he went up to the

top of the water too, and peeped out to see what would
happen.

Iio THE WATER-BABIES:

And as the creature sat in the warm bright sun, a
wonderful change came over it. It grew strong and
firm ; the most lovely colours began to show on its body ;
blue and yellow and black, spots and bars and rings ; out
of its back rose four great wings of bright brown gauze ;
and its eyes grew so large that they filled all its head,
and shone like ten thousand diamonds.

“ Oh, you beautiful creature !” said Tom ; and he put
out his hand to catch it.

But the thing whirred up into the air, and hung
poised on its wings a moment, and then settled down
again by Tom quite fearless.

“ No!” it said, “ you cannot catch me. I am a dragon¬
fly now, the king of all the flies ; and I shall dance in the
sunshine, and hawk over the river, and catch gnats, and
have a beautiful wife like myself. I know what I shall
do. Hurrah!’’ And he flew away into the air, and
began catching gnats.

“Oh! come back, come back,” cried Tom, “you
beautiful creature. I have no one to play with, and I am
so lonely here. If you will but come back I will never
try to catch you.”

“ I don’t care whether you do or not,” said the
dragon-fly ; “ for you can’t. But when I have had my

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

1 1 1

dinner, and looked a little about this pretty place, I will
come back, and have a little chat about all I have seen
in my travels. Why, what a huge tree this is ! and what
huge leaves on it !”

It was only a big dock : but you know the dragon¬
fly had never seen any but little water-trees ; starwort,
and milfoil, and water-crowfoot, and such like ; so it did
look very big to him. Besides, he was very short-sighted,
as all dragon-flies are ; and never could see a yard before
his nose ; any more than a great many other folks, who
are not half as handsome as he.

The dragon-fly did come back, and chatted away with
Tom. He was a little conceited about his fine colours
and his large wings ; but you know, he had been a poor
dirty ugly creature all his life before ; so there were great
excuses for him. He was very fond of talking about all
the wonderful things he saw in the trees and the meadows ;
and Tom liked to listen to him, for he had forgotten all
about them. So in a little while they became great
friends.

And I am very glad to say, that Tom learned such a
lesson that day, that he did not torment creatures for a
long time after. And then the caddises grew quite tame,
and used to tell him strange stories about the way they

THE WATER-BABIES :

built their houses, and changed their skins, and turned
at last into winged flies ; till Tom began to long to
change his skin, and have wings like them some day.

And the trout and he made it up (for trout very soon

forget if they have been
frightened and hurt). So
Tom used to play with
them at hare and hounds,
and great fun they had ;
and he used to try to
leap out of the water,
head over heels, as they
did before a shower came
on ; but somehow he never
could manage it. He
liked most, though, to see
them rising at the flies,
as they sailed round and
round under the shadow
of the great oak, where
the beetles fell flop into the water, and the green
caterpillars let themselves down from the boughs by silk
ropes for no reason at all ; and then changed their
foolish minds for no reason at all either ; and hauled

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 113

themselves up again into the tree, rolling up the rope in
a ball between their paws ; which is a very clever rope-
dancer's trick, and neither Blondin nor Leotard could do
it : but why they should take so much trouble about it
no one can tell ; for they cannot get their living, as
Blondin and Leotard do, by trying to break their necks
on a string.

And very often Tom caught them just as they
touched the water; and caught the alder -flies, and the
caperers, and the cock-tailed duns and spinners, yellow,
and brown, and claret, and gray, and gave them to his
friends the trout. Perhaps he was not quite kind to
the flies ; but one must do a good turn to one’s friends
when one can.

And at last he gave up catching even the flies ; for
he made acquaintance with one by accident and found
him a very merry little fellow. And this was the way it
happened ; and it is all quite true.

He was basking at the top of the water one hot day
in July, catching duns and feeding the trout, when he saw
a new sort, a dark gray little fellow with a brown head.
He was a very little fellow indeed : but he made the
most of himself, as people ought to do. He cocked up
his head, and he cocked up his wings, and he cocked up

1

1 14 THE WATER-BABIES :

his tail, and he cocked up the two whisks at his tail-end,
and, in short, he looked the cockiest little man of all little
men. And so he proved to be ; for instead of getting
away, he hopped upon Tom’s finger, and sat there as
bold as nine tailors ; and he cried out in the tiniest,
shrillest, squeakiest little voice you ever heard,

“ Much obliged to you, indeed ; but I don’t want it

, ”
yet.

“Want what?” said Tom, quite taken aback by his
impudence.

“Your leg, which you are kind enough to hold out
for me to sit on. I must just go and see after my wife
for a few minutes. Dear me ! what a troublesome busi¬
ness a family is !” (though the idle little rogue did nothing
at all, but left his poor wife to lay all the eggs by herself).
“When I come back, I shall be glad of it, if you’ll be so
good as to keep it sticking out just so;” and off he
flew.

1 om thought him a very cool sort of personage ; and
still more so, when in five minutes he came back, and
said — “Ah, you were tired waiting? Well, your other
leg will do as well.”

And he popped himself down on Tom’s knee, and
began chatting away in his squeaking voice.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 115

“ So you live under the water ? It’s a low place. I
lived there for some time ; and was very shabby and
dirty. But I didn’t choose that that should last. So I
turned respectable, and came up to the top, and put on
this gray suit. It’s a very business-like suit, you think,
don’t you ?”

“Very neat and quiet indeed,” said Tom.

“Yes, one must be quiet and neat and respectable,
and all that sort of thing for a little, when one becomes
a family man. But I’m tired of it, that’s the truth. I’ve
done quite enough business, I consider, in the last week,
to last me my life. So I shall put on a ball-dress, and
go out and be a smart man, and see the gay world, and

have a dance or two. Why shouldn’t one be jolly if one

} ”

can r

“ And what will become of your wife ?”

“Oh! she is a very plain stupid creature, and that’s
the truth ; and thinks about nothing but eggs. If she
chooses to come, why she may ; and if not, why I go
without her ; — and here I go.”

And, as he spoke, he turned quite pale, and then
quite white.

“Why, you’re ill!” said Tom. But he did not
answer.

1 16 THE WATER-BABIES:

“You’re dead,” said Tom, looking at him as he stood
on his knee as white as a ghost.

“ No, I ain’t ! ” answered a little squeaking voice over
his head. “ This is me up here, in my ball-dress ; and
that’s my skin. Ha, ha ! you could not do such a trick
as that ! ”

And no more Tom could, nor Houdin, nor Robin,
nor Frikell, nor all the conjurors in the world. For the
little rogue had jumped clean out of his own skin, and
left it standing on Tom’s knee, eyes, wings, legs, tail,
exactly as if it had been alive.

“Ha, ha!” he said, and he jerked and skipped up
and down, never stopping an instant, just as if he had
St. Vitus’s dance. “Ain’t I a pretty fellow now?”

And so he was ; for his body was white, and his tail
orange, and his eyes all the colours of a peacock’s tail.
And what was the oddest of all, the whisks at the end
of his tail had grown five times as long as they were
before.

“Ah!” said he, “now I will see the gay world. My
living won’t cost me much, for I have no mouth, you see,
and no inside ; so I can never be hungry nor have the
stomach-ache neither.”

No more he had. He had grown as dry and hard

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 117

and empty as a quill, as such silly shallow - hearted
fellows deserve to grow.

But, instead of being ashamed of his emptiness, he
was quite proud of it, as a good many fine gentlemen
are, and began flirting and flipping up and down, and
singing —

“ My wife shall dance , and I shall sing ,

So merrily pass the day ;

For I hold it for quite the zoisest thing ,

To drive dull care away."

And he danced up and down for three days and three
nights, till he grew so tired, that he tumbled into the
water, and floated down. But what became of him Tom
never knew, and he himself never minded ; for Tom
heard him singing to the last, as he floated down —

“To drive dull care away -ay -ay ! ”

And if lie did not care, why nobody else cared either.

But one day Tom had a new adventure. He was
sitting on a water-lily leaf, he and his friend the dragon¬
fly, watching the gnats dance. The dragon-fly had
eaten as many as he wanted, and was sitting quite still
and sleepy, for it was very hot and bright. The gnats

nS THE WATER-BABIES:

(who did not care the least for their poor brothers’ death)
danced a foot over his head quite happily, and a large
black fly settled within an inch of his nose, and began
washing his own face and combing his hair with his paws :
but the dragon-fly never stirred, and kept on chatting
to Tom about the times when he lived under the water.

Suddenly, Tom heard the strangest noise up the
stream ; cooing, and grunting, and whining, and squeak¬
ing, as if you had put into a bag two stock-doves, nine
mice, three guinea-pigs, and a blind puppy, and left them
there to settle themselves and make music.

He looked up the water, and there he saw a sight as
strange as the noise ; a great ball rolling over and over
down the stream, seeming one moment of soft brown fur,
and the next of shining glass : and yet it was not a ball ;
for sometimes it broke up and streamed away in pieces,
and then it joined again ; and all the while the noise
came out of it louder and louder.

Tom asked the dragon-fly what it could be : but, of
course, with his short sight, he could not even see it,
though it was not ten yards away. So he took the
neatest little header into the water, and started off to see
for himself ; and, when he came near, the ball turned out
to be four or five beautiful creatures, many times larger

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 119

than Tom, who were swimming about, and rolling, and
diving, and twisting, and wrestling, and cuddling, and
kissing, and biting, and scratching, in the most charming
fashion that ever was seen. And if you don’t believe
me, you may go to the Zoological Gardens (for I am
afraid that you won’t see it nearer, unless, perhaps, you
get up at five in the morning, and go down to Cordery’s
Moor, and watch by the great withy pollard which hangs
over the backwater, where the otters breed sometimes),
and then say, if otters at play in the water are not the
merriest, lithest, gracefullest creatures you ever saw.

But, when the biggest of them saw Tom, she darted
out from the rest, and cried in the water-language sharply
enough, “Quick, children, here is something to eat,
indeed ! ” and came at poor Tom, showing such a wicked
pair of eyes, and such a set of sharp teeth in a grinning
mouth, that Tom, who had thought her very handsome,
said to himself, Handsome is that handsome does , and
slipped in between the water-lily roots as fast as he could,
and then turned round and made faces at her.

“ Come out,” said the wicked old otter, “or it will be
worse for you.”

But Tom looked at her from between two thick roots,
and shook them with all his might, making horrible faces

120 THE WATER-BABIES:

all the while, just as he used to grin through the railings
at the old women, when he lived before. It was not
quite well bred, no doubt ; but you know, Tom had not
finished his education yet.

“Come away, children,” said the otter in disgust, “it

is not worth eating, after all. It is only a nasty eft, which
nothing eats, not even those vulgar pike in the pond.”

“ I am not an eft ! ” said Tom ; “ efts have tails.”

“You are an eft,” said the otter, very positively ; “ I
see your two hands quite plain, and I know you have a
tail.”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 12 i

“ I tell you I have not,” said Tom. “ Look here!"
and he turned his pretty little self quite round ; and, sure
enough, he had no more tail than you.

The otter might have got out of it by saying that
Tom was a frog : but, like a great many other people,
when she had once said a thing, she stood to it, right or
wrong ; so she answered :

“ I say you are an eft, and therefore you are, and not
fit food for gentlefolk like me and my children. You
may stay there till the salmon eat you (she knew the
salmon would not, but she wanted to frighten poor Tom).
Ha! ha! they will eat you, and we will eat them;” and
the otter laughed such a wicked cruel laugh — as you may
hear them do sometimes ; and the first time that you hear
it you will probably think it is bogies.

“What are salmon ?” asked Tom.

“ Fish, you eft, great fish, nice fish to eat. They are
the lords of the fish, and we are lords of the salmon
and she laughed again. “We hunt them up and down
the pools, and drive them up into a corner, the silly
things ; they are so proud, and bully the little trout, and
the minnows, till they see us coming, and then they are so
meek all at once ; and we catch them, but we disdain to
eat them all ; we just bite out their soft throats and suck

122 THE WATER-BABIES

their sweet juice — Oh, so good!” — (and she licked her
wicked lips) — “and then throw them away, and go and
catch another. They are coming soon, children, coming
soon ; I can smell the rain coming up off the sea, and
then hurrah for a fresh, and salmon, and plenty of eating
all day long.”

And the otter grew so proud that she turned head
over heels twice, and then stood upright half out of the
water, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“And where do they come from ?” asked Tom, who
kept himself very close, for he was considerably fright¬
ened.

“ Out of the sea, eft, the great wide sea, where they
might stay and be safe if they liked. But out of the sea
the silly things come, into the great river down below,
and we come up to watch for them ; and when they go
down again we go down and follow them. And there
we fish for the bass and the pollock, and have jolly
days along the shore, and toss and roll in the breakers,
and sleep snug in the warm dry crags. Ah, that is a
merry life too, children, if it were not for those horrid
men.”

“What are men?” asked Tom; but somehow he
seemed to know before he asked.

124 THE WATER-BABIES:

“Two-legged things, eft: and, now I come to look at

O O 7 7

you, they are actually something like you, if you had not
a tail ” (she was determined that Tom should have a tail),
“ only a great deal bigger, worse luck for us ; and they
catch the fish with hooks and lines, which get into our
feet sometimes, and set pots along the rocks to catch
lobsters. They speared my poor dear husband as he
went out to find something for me to eat. I was laid up
among the crags then, and we were very low in the world,
for the sea was so rough that no fish would come in shore.
But they speared him, poor fellow, and I saw them carry¬
ing him away upon a pole. Ah, he lost his life for your
sakes, my children, poor dear obedient creature that he
was.”

And the otter grew so sentimental (for otters can be
very sentimental when they choose, like a good many
people who are both cruel and greedy, and no good to
anybody at all) that she sailed solemnly away down the
burn, and Tom saw her no more for that time. And
lucky it was for her that she did so ; for no sooner was
she gone, than down the bank came seven little rough
terrier dogs, snuffing and yapping, and grubbing and
splashing, in full cry after the otter. Tom hid among
the water-lilies till they were gone ; for he could not

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 125

guess that they were the water-fairies come to help
him.

But he could not help thinking of what the otter had
said about the great river and the broad sea. And, as
he thought, he longed to go and see them. He could
not tell why ; but the more he thought, the more he grew
discontented with the narrow little stream in which he
lived, and all his companions there ; and wanted to get
out into the wide wide world, and enjoy all the wonderful
sights of which he was sure it was full.

And once he set off to go down the stream. But the
stream was very low ; and when he came to the shallows
he could not keep under water, for there was no water
left to keep under. So the sun burned his back and made
him sick ; and he went back again and lay quiet in the
pool for a whole week more.

And then, on the evening of a very hot day, he saw
a sight.

He had been very stupid all day, and so had the
trout ; for they would not move an inch to take a fly,
though there were thousands on the water, but lay dozing
at the bottom under the shade of the stones ; and Tom
lay dozing too, and was glad to cuddle their smooth cool
sides, for the wrater was quite warm and unpleasant.

126 THE WATER-BABIES:

But toward evening it grew suddenly dark, and
Tom looked up and saw a blanket of black clouds lying
right across the valley above his head, resting on the
crags right and left. He felt not quite frightened, but
very still ; for everything was still. There was not a
whisper of wind, nor a chirp of a bird to be heard ; and
next a few great drops of rain fell plop into the water,
and one hit Tom on the nose, and made him pop his
head down quickly enough.

And then the thunder roared, and the lightning
flashed, and leapt across Vendale and back again, from
cloud to cloud, and cliff to cliff, till the very rocks in the
stream seemed to shake : and Tom looked up at it
through the water, and thought it the finest thing he
ever saw in his life.

But out of the water he dared not put his head ; for
the rain came down by bucketsful, and the hail hammered
like shot on the stream, and churned it into foam ; and
soon the stream rose, and rushed down, higher and
higher, and fouler and fouler, full of beetles, and sticks ;
and straws, and worms, and addle-eggs, and wood-lice,
and leeches, and odds and ends, and omnium-gatherums,
and this, that, and the other, enough to fill nine
museums.

Tom could hardly stand against

the stream, and hid

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND BABY.

128 THE WATER-BABIES:

behind a rock. But the trout did not ; for out they rushed
from among the stones, and began gobbling the beetles
and leeches in the most greedy and quarrelsome way,
and swimming about with great worms hanging out of
their mouths, tugging and kicking to get them away
from each other.

And now, by the flashes of the lightning, Tom saw a
new sight — all the bottom of the stream alive with great
eels, turning and twisting along, all down stream and
away. They had been hiding for weeks past in the
cracks of the rocks, and in burrows in the mud ; and Tom
had hardly ever seen them, except now and then at night :
but now they were all out, and went hurrying past him
so fiercely and wildly that he was quite frightened. And
as they hurried past he could hear them say to each other,
“We must run, we must run. What a jolly thunder¬
storm ! Down to the sea, down to the sea !”

And then the otter came by with all her brood, twin¬
ing and sweeping along as fast as the eels themselves ;
and she spied Tom as she came by, and said :

“ Now is your time, eft, if you want to see the world.
Come along, children, never mind those nasty eels : we
shall breakfast on salmon to-morrow. Down to the sea,
down to the sea ! ”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

129

Then came a flash brighter than all the rest, and by
the light of it — in the thousandth part of a second they
were gone again — but he had seen them, he was certain
of it — Three beautiful little white girls, with their arms
twined round each others’ necks, floating down the
torrent, as they sang, “ Down to the sea, down to the

I ”

sea !

“Oh stay! Wait for me!” cried Tom; but they
were gone : yet he could hear their voices clear and
sweet through the roar of thunder and water and wind,
singing as they died away, “ Down to the sea !”

“Down to the sea?” said Tom; “everything is
going to the sea, and I will go too. Good-bye, trout.”
But the trout were so busy gobbling worms that they
never turned to answer him; so that Tom was spared
the pain of bidding them farewell.

And now, down the rushing stream, guided by the
bright flashes of the storm ; past tall birch-fringed rocks,
which shone out one moment as clear as day, and the
next were dark as night ; past dark hovers under swirling
banks, from which great trout rushed out on Tom, think¬
ing him to be good to eat, and turned back sulkily, for
the fairies sent them home again with a tremendous
scolding, for daring to meddle with a water-baby ; on

i3o THE WATER-BABIES:

through narrow strids and roaring cataracts, where Tom
was deafened and blinded for a moment by the rushing
waters ; along deep reaches, where the white water-lilies
tossed and flapped beneath the wind and hail ; past
sleeping villages ; under dark bridge -arches, and away
and away to the sea. And Tom could not stop, and did
not care to stop ; he would see the great world below,
and the salmon, and the breakers, and the wide wide sea.

And when the daylight came, Tom found himself out
in the salmon river.

And what sort of a river was it ? Was it like an
Irish stream, winding through the brown bogs, where the
wild ducks squatter up from among the white water-lilies,
and the curlews flit to and fro, crying “ Tullie-wheep,
mind your sheep and Dennis tells you strange stories
of the Peishtamore, the great bogy-snake which lies in
the black peat pools, among the old pine-stems, and puts
his head out at night to snap at the cattle as they come
down to drink? — But you must not believe all that
Dennis tells you, mind ; for if you ask him :

“Is there a salmon here, do you think, Dennis ?”

“Is it salmon, thin, your honour manes ? Salmon ?
Cartloads it is of thim, thin, an’ ridgmens, shouldther-
ing ache out of water, av’ ye’d but the luck to see thim.”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 13 1

Then you fish the pool all over, and never get a
rise.

“ But there can't be a salmon here, Dennis ! and, if

you’ll but think, if one had come up last tide, he’d be
gone to the higher pools by now."

“ Shure thin, and your honour’s the thrue fisherman,
and understands it all like a book. Why, ye spake as if
ye’d known the wather a thousand years ! As I said,
how could there be a fish here at all, just now ?”

i32 THE WATER-BABIES:

“ But you said just now they were shouldering each
other out of water ?”

And then Dennis will look up at you with his hand¬
some, sly, soft, sleepy, good-natured, untrustable, Irish
gray eye, and answer with the prettiest smile :

“ Shure, and didn’t I think your honour would like a
pleasant answer ?”

So you must not trust Dennis, because he is in the
habit of giving pleasant answers : but, instead of being
angry with him, you must remember that he is a poor
Paddy, and knows no better; so you must just burst out
laughing ; and then he will burst out laughing too, and
slave for you, and trot about after you, and show you
good sport if he can — for he is an affectionate fellow, and
as fond of sport as you are — and if he can’t, tell you fibs
instead, a hundred an hour ; and wonder all the while
why poor ould Ireland does not prosper like England
and Scotland, and some other places, where folk have
taken up a ridiculous fancy that honesty is the best
policy.

Or was it like a Welsh salmon river, which is remark¬
able chiefly (at least, till this last year) for containing no
salmon, as they have been all poached out by the en¬
lightened peasantry, to prevent the Cythrawl Sassenach

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 133

(which means you, my little clear, your kith and kin, and
signifies much the same as the Chinese Fan Quei) from
coming bothering into Wales, with good tackle, and ready
money, and civilisation, and common honesty, and other
like things of which the Cymry stand in no need what¬
soever ?

Or was it such a salmon stream as I trust you will
see among the Hampshire water-meadows before your
hairs are gray, under the wise new fishing-laws ? — when
Winchester apprentices shall covenant, as they did three
hundred years ago, not to be made to eat salmon more
than three days a week ; and fresh-run fish shall be as
plentiful under Salisbury spire as they are in Holly-hole
at Christchurch ; in the good time coming, when folks
shall see that, of all Heaven’s gifts of food, the one to be
protected most carefully is that worthy gentleman salmon,
who is generous enough to go down to the sea weighing
five ounces, and to come back next year weighing five
pounds, without having cost the soil or the state one
farthing ?

Or was it like a Scotch stream, such as Arthur Clough
drew in his “ Bothie —

“ Where over a ledge of granite
Into a granite bason the amber torrent descended. ....

i34 THE WATER-BABIES:

Beautiful there for the colour derived from green rocks
tender ;

Beautiful most of all , where beads of foam uprising
Mingle their clouds of white with the delicate hue of the
stillness. . . .

Cliff over cliff for its sides , with rowan and pendant birch
boughs . . .

Ah, my little man, when you are a big man, and fish
such a stream as that, you will hardly care, I think,
whether she be roaring down in full spate, like coffee
covered with scald cream, while the fish are swirling at
your fly as an oar-blade swirls in a boat-race, or flashing
up the cataract like silver arrows, out of the fiercest of
the foam ; or whether the fall be dwindled to a single
thread, and the shingle below be as white and dusty as a
turnpike road, while the salmon huddle together in one
dark cloud in the clear amber pool, sleeping away their
time till the rain creeps back again off the sea. You will
not care much, if you have eyes and brains ; for you will
lay down your rod contentedly, and drink in at your eyes
the beauty of that glorious place ; and listen to the water-
ouzel piping on the stones, and watch the yellow roes
come down to drink and look up at you with their great

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 135

soft trustful eyes, as much as to say, “You could not
have the heart to shoot at us ?” And then, if you have
sense, you will turn and talk to the great giant of a gilly
who lies basking on the stone beside you. He will tell
you no fibs, my little man ; for he is a Scotchman, and
fears God, and not the priest ; and, as you talk with him,

you will be surprised more and more at his knowledge,
his sense, his humour, his courtesy ; and you will find out
— unless you have found it out before — that a man may
learn from his Bible to be a more thorough gentleman
than if he had been brought up in all the drawing-rooms
in London.

136 THE WATER-BABIES:

No. It was none of these, the salmon stream at
Harthover. It was such a stream as you see in dear old
Bewick ; Bewick, who was born and bred upon them.
A full hundred yards broad it was, sliding on from broad
pool to broad shallow, and broad shallow to broad pool,
over great fields of shingle, under oak and ash coverts,
past low cliffs of sandstone, past green meadows, and fair
parks, and a great house of gray stone, and brown moors
above, and here and there against the sky the smoking
chimney of a colliery. You must look at Bewick to see
just what it was like, for he has drawn it a hundred times
with the care and the love of a true north countryman ;
and, even if you do not care about the salmon river, you
ought, like all good boys, to know your Bewick.

At least, so old Sir John used to say, and very
sensibly he put it too, as he was wont to do :

“ If they want to describe a finished young gentleman
in France, I hear, they say of him, ‘7/ sail son Rabelais
But if I want to describe one in England, I say, ‘ He
knows his Bewick. ’ And I think that is the higher
compliment.”

But Tom thought nothing about what the river was
like. All his fancy was, to get down to the wide wide
sea.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 137

And after a while he came to a place where the river
spread out into broad still shallow reaches, so wide that
little Tom, as he put his head out of the water, could
hardly see across.

And there he stopped. He got a little frightened.
“This must be the sea,” he thought. “What a wide
place it is ! If I go on into it I shall surely lose my way,
or some strange thing will bite me. I will stop here and
look out for the otter, or the eels, or some one to tell me
where I shall go.”

So he went back a little way, and crept into a crack
of the rock, just where the river opened out into the wide
shallowrs, and watched for some one to tell him his way :
but the otter and the eels were gone on miles and miles
down the stream.

There he waited, and slept too, for he was quite
tired with his night’s journey ; and, when he woke, the
stream was clearing to a beautiful amber hue, though
it was still very high. And after a while he saw a sight
which made him jump up ; for he knew in a moment it
was one of the things which he had come to look for.

Such a fish ! ten times as big as the biggest trout, and
a hundred times as big as Tom, sculling up the stream
past him, as easily as Tom had sculled down.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

i39

Such a fish ! shining silver from head to tail, and here
and there a crimson dot ; with a grand hooked nose and
grand curling lip, and a grand bright eye, looking round
him as proudly as a king, and surveying the water right
and left as if all belonged to him. Surely he must be the
salmon, the king of all the fish.

Tom was so frightened that he longed to creep into
a hole ; but he need not have been ; for salmon are all
true gentlemen, and, like true gentlemen, they look noble
and proud enough, and yet, like true gentlemen, they
never harm or quarrel with any one, but go about their
own business, and leave rude fellows to themselves.

The salmon looked at him full in the face, and then
went on without minding him, with a swish or two of his
tail which made the stream boil again. And in a few
minutes came another, and then four or five, and so on ;
and all passed Tom, rushing and plunging up the cataract
with strong strokes of their silver tails, now and then
leaping clean out of water and up over a rock, shining
gloriously for a moment in the bright sun ; while Tom
was so delighted that he could have watched them all
day long.

And at last one came up bigger than all the rest ;
but he came slowly, and stopped, and looked back, and

140 THE WATER-BABIES:

seemed very anxious and busy. And Tom saw that he
was helping another salmon, an especially handsome one,
who had not a single spot upon it, but was clothed in
pure silver from nose to tail.

“My dear," said the great fish to his companion,
“you really look dreadfully tired, and you must not
over-exert yourself at first. Do rest yourself behind this
rock and he shoved her gently with his nose, to the
rock where Tom sat.

You must know that this was the salmon’s wife. For
salmon, like other true gentlemen, always choose their
lady, and love her, and are true to her, and take care of
her, and work for her, and fight for her, as every true
gentleman ought ; and are not like vulgar chub and roach
and pike, who have no high feelings, and take no care of
their wives.

Then he saw Tom, and looked at him very fiercely
one moment, as if he was going to bite him.

“What do you want here ?’’ he said, very fiercely.

“Oh, don’t hurt me!” cried Tom. “I only want to
look at you ; you are so handsome.”

“Ah ?’’ said the salmon, very stately but very civilly.
“ I really beg your pardon ; I see what you are, my little
dear. I have met one or two creatures like you before,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 141

and found them very agreeable and well-behaved.
Indeed, one of them showed me a great kindness lately,
which I hope to be able to repay. I hope we shall not
be in your way here. As soon as this lady is rested, we
shall proceed on our journey.’’

What a well-bred old salmon he was !

“So you have seen things like me before?” asked
Tom.

“Several times, my dear. Indeed, it was only last
night that one at the river’s mouth came and warned me
and my wife of some new stake-nets which had got into
the stream, I cannot tell how, since last winter, and
showed us the way round them, in the most charmingly
obliging way.”

“So there are babies in the sea?” cried Tom, and
clapped his little hands. “ Then I shall have some one
to play with there ? How delightful !”

“Were there no babies up this stream ?” asked the
lady salmon.

“ No ; and I grew so lonely. I thought I saw three
last night ; but they were gone in an instant, down to
the sea. So I went too ; for I had nothing to play with
but caddises and dragon-flies and trout.”

“ Ugh!” cried the lady, “what low company !”

142 THE WATER-BABIES :

“ My dear, if he has been in low company, he has
certainly not learnt their low manners,” said the salmon.

“No, indeed, poor little dear: but how sad for him
to live among such people as caddises, who have actually
six legs, the nasty things ; and dragon-flies, too ! why they
are not even good to eat ; for I tried them once, and
they are all hard and empty ; and, as for trout, every
one knows what they are.” Whereon she curled up her
lip, and looked dreadfully scornful, while her husband
curled up his too, till he looked as proud as Alcibiades.

“ Why do you dislike the trout so ?” asked Tom.

“ My dear, we do not even mention them, if we can
help it ; for I am sorry to say they are relations of ours
who do us no credit. A great many years ago they were
just like us : but they were so lazy, and cowardly, and
greedy, that instead of going down to the sea every year
to see the world and grow strong and fat, they chose
to stay and poke about in the little streams and eat worms
and grubs : and they are very properly punished for it ;
for they have grown ugly and brown and spotted and
small ; and are actually so degraded in their tastes, that
they will eat pur children.”

“And then they pretend to scrape acquaintance with
us again,” said the lady. “Why, I have actually known

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 143

one of them propose to a lady salmon, the little impudent
little creature.”

“ I should hope,” said the gentleman, “ that there are
very few ladies of our race who would degrade themselves
by listening to such a creature for an instant. If I saw
such a thing happen, I should consider it my duty to put
them both to death upon the spot.” So the old salmon
said, like an old blue-blooded hidalgo of Spain ; and
what is more, he would have done it too. For you must
know, no enemies are so bitter against each other as
those who are of the same race ; and a salmon looks on
a trout, as some great folks look on some little folks, as
something just too much like himself to be tolerated.

“ Sweet is the lore which Nature brings ;

Our meddling intellect

Mis-shapes the beauteous forms of things

We murder to dissect.

Enough of science and of art :

Close up these barren leaves ;

Come forth, and bring with you a heart
That watches and receives.”

Wordsworth.

CHAPTER IV.

the salmon went up, after
Pom had warned them of the
wicked old otter ; and
Tom went down, but
slowly and cautiously,
coasting along the shore.
- He was many days about it,
for it was many miles down to the
sea ; and perhaps he would never
have found his way, if the fairies
had not guided him, without his seeing their fair faces, or
feeling their gentle hands.

And, as he went, he had a very strange adventure.
It was a clear still September night, and the moon shone

L

146 THE WATER-BABIES:

so brightly down through the water, that he could not
sleep, though he shut his eyes as tight as possible. So
at last he came up to the top, and sat upon a little point
of rock, and looked up at the broad yellow moon, and
wondered what she was, and thought that she looked at
him. And he watched the moonlight on the rippling
river, and the black heads of the firs, and the silver-
frosted lawns, and listened to the owl’s hoot, and the
snipe’s bleat, and the fox’s bark, and the otter’s laugh ;
and smelt the soft perfume of the birches, and the wafts
of heather honey off the grousemoor far above ; and felt
very happy, though he could not well tell why. You, of
course, would have been very cold sitting there on a
September night, without the least bit of clothes on your
wet back ; but Tom was a water-baby, and therefore felt
cold no more than a fish.

Suddenly, he saw a beautiful sight. A bright red
light moved along the river -side, and threw down into
the water a long tap-root of flame. Tom, curious little
rogue that he was, must needs go and see what it was ;
so he swam to the shore, and met the light as it stopped
over a shallow run at the edge of a low rock.

And there, underneath the light, lay five or six great
salmon, looking up at the flame with their great goggle

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 147

eyes, and wagging their tails, as if they were very much
pleased at it.

Tom came to the top, to look at this wonderful light
nearer, and made a splash.

And he heard a voice say :

“ There was a fish rose.”

He did not know what the words meant : but he
seemed to know the sound of them, and to know the voice
which spoke them ; and he saw on the bank three great
two-legged creatures, one of whom held the light, flaring
and sputtering, and another a long pole. And he knew
that they were men, and was frightened, and crept into a
hole in the rock, from which he could see what went on.

The man with the torch bent down over the water,
and looked earnestly in ; and then he said :

“ Tak’ that muckle fellow, lad ; he’s ower fifteen
punds ; and haud your hand steady.”

Tom felt that there was some danger coming, and
longed to warn the foolish salmon, who kept staring up
at the light as if he was bewitched. But before he could
make up his mind, down came the pole through the
water ; there was a fearful splash and struggle, and Tom
saw that the poor salmon was speared right through, and
was lifted out of the water.

I4S THE WATER-BABIES:

And then, from behind, there sprang on these three
men three other men ; and there were shouts, and blows,
and words which Tom recollected to have heard before ;
and he shuddered and turned sick at them now, for he
felt somehow that they were strange, and ugly, and
wrong, and horrible. And it all began to come back to
him. They were men ; and they were fighting ; savage,
desperate, up-and-down fighting, such as Tom had seen
too many times before.

And he stopped his little ears, and longed to swim
away ; and was very glad that he was a water -baby,
and had nothing to do any more with horrid dirty men,
with foul clothes on their backs, and foul words on their
lips : but he dared not stir out of his hole ; while the
rock shook over his head with the trampling and strug¬
gling of the keepers and the poachers.

All of a sudden there was a tremendous splash, and a
frightful flash, and a hissing, and all was still.

Tor into the water, close to Tom, fell one of the
men ; he who held the light in his hand. Into the swift
river he sank, and rolled over and over in the current,
l orn heard the men above run along, seemingly looking
for him ; but he drifted down into the deep hole below,
and there lay quite still, and they could not find him.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

149

Tom waited a long time, till all was quiet ; and then
he peeped out, and saw the man lying. At last he
screwed up his courage and swam down to him. “ Per¬
haps,” he thought, “ the water has made him fall asleep,
as it did me.”

Then he went nearer. He grew more and more
curious, he could not tell why. He must go and look at
him. He would go very quietly, of course; so he swam
round and round him, closer and closer ; and, as he did
not stir, at last he came quite close and looked him in
the face.

The moon shone so bright that Tom could see every
feature ; and, as he saw, he recollected, bit by bit, it was
his old master, Grimes.

Tom turned tail, and swam away as fast as he could.

“ Oh dear me!” he thought, “now he will turn into
a water-baby. What a nasty troublesome one he will
be ! And perhaps he will find me out, and beat me
again.”

So he went up the river again a little way, and lay
there the rest of the night under an alder root ; but, when
morning came, he longed to go down again to the big
pool, and see whether Mr. Grimes had turned into a
water-baby yet.

i5o THE WATER-BABIES:

So he went very carefully, peeping round all the
rocks, and hiding under all the roots. Mr. Grimes lay
there still; he had not turned into a water-baby. In
the afternoon Tom went back again. He could not rest
till he had found out what had become of Mr. Grimes.
But this time Mr. Grimes was gone ; and Tom made up
his mind that he was turned into a water-baby.

He might have made himself easy, poor little man ;
Mr. Grimes did not turn into a water-baby, or anything
like one at all. But he did not make himself easy ; and
a long time he was fearful lest he should meet Grimes
suddenly in some deep pool. He could not know that
the fairies had carried him away, and put him, where
they put everything which falls into the water, exactly
where it ought to be. But, do you know, what had
happened to Mr. Grimes had such an effect on him that
he never poached salmon any more. And it is quite
certain that, when a man becomes a confirmed poacher,
the only way to cure him is to put him under water for
twenty-four hours, like Grimes. So, when you grow to
be a big man, do you behave as all honest fellows
should ; and never touch a fish or a head of game which
belongs to another man without his express leave ; and
then people will call you a gentleman, and treat you

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 15 1

like one ; and perhaps give you good sport : instead of
hitting you into the river, or calling you a poaching snob.

Then Tom went on down, for he was afraid of stay¬
ing near Grimes ; and as he went, all the vale looked
sad. The red and yellow leaves showered down into the
river ; the flies and beetles were all dead and gone ; the
chill autumn fog lay low upon the hills, and sometimes
spread itself so thickly on the river that he could not see
his way. But he felt his way instead, following the flow
of the stream, day after day, past great bridges, past
boats and barges, past the great town, with its wharfs,
and mills, and tall smoking chimneys, and ships which
rode at anchor in the stream ; and now and then he ran
against their hawsers, and wondered what they were, and
peeped out, and saw the sailors lounging on board,
smoking their pipes ; and ducked under again, for he
was terribly afraid of being caught by man and turned
into a chimney-sweep once more. He did not know
that the fairies were close to him always, shutting the
sailors’ eyes lest they should see him, and turning him
aside from millraces, and sewer-mouths, and all foul and
dangerous things. Poor little fellow, it was a dreary
journey for him ; and more than once he longed to be
back in Vendale, playing with the trout in the bright

152 THE WATER-BABIES:

summer sun. But it could not be. What has been
once can never come over again. And people can be
little babies, even water-babies, only once in their lives.

Besides, people who make up their minds to go and
see the world, as Tom did, must needs find it a weary
journey. Lucky for them if they do not lose heart and
stop half-way, instead of going on bravely to the end as
Tom did. For then they will remain neither boys nor
men, neither fish, flesh, nor good red -herring : having
learnt a great deal too much, and yet not enough ; and
sown their wild oats, without having the advantage of
reaping them.

But Tom was always a brave, determined, little
English bull-dog, who never knew when he was beaten ;
and on and on he held, till he saw a long way off the
red buoy through the fog. And then he found to his
surprise, the stream turned round, and running up inland.

It was the tide, of course : but Tom knew nothing of
the tide. He only knew that in a minute more the
water, which had been fresh, turned salt all round him.
And then there came a change over him. He felt as
strong, and light, and fresh, as if his veins had run
champagne ; and gave, he did not know why, three skips
out of the water, a yard high, and head over heels, just

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 153

as the salmon do when they first touch the noble rich
salt water, which, as some wise men tell us, is the mother
of all living things.

He did not care now for the tide being against him.
The red buoy was in sight, dancing in the open sea ; and
to the buoy he would go, and to it he went. He passed
great shoals of bass
and mullet, leaping and
rushing in after the
shrimps, but he never
heeded them, or they
him ; and once he
passed a great black
shining seal, who was
coming in after the
mullet. The seal put
his head and shoulders
out of water, and stared
at him, looking exactly like a fat old greasy negro with
a gray pate. And Tom, instead of being frightened,
said, “ How d’ye do, sir; what a beautiful place the
sea is!” And the old seal, instead of trying to bite
him, looked at him with his soft sleepy winking eyes,
and said, “ Good tide to you, my little man ; are you

1 54

THE WATER-BABIES :

looking for your brothers and sisters ? I passed them
all at play outside.'

“Oh, then,’’ said Tom, “ I shall have playfellows at
last,’’ and he swam on to the buoy, and got upon it (for
he was quite out of breath) and sat there, and looked
round for water -babies : but there were none to be

seen.

The sea-breeze came in freshly with the tide and

blew the fog away ; and
the little waves danced
for joy around the buoy,
and the old buoy danced
with them. The shadows
of the clouds ran races
over the bright blue bay,
and yet never caught
each other up ; and the
breakers plunged merrily upon the wide white sands, and
jumped up over the rocks, to see what the green fields
inside were like, and tumbled down and broke themselves
all to pieces, and never minded it a bit, but mended
themselves and jumped up again. And the terns hovered
over Tom like huge white dragon-flies with black heads,
and the gulls laughed like girls at play, and the sea-pies,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 155

with their red bills and legs, flew to and fro from shore
to shore, and whistled sweet and wild. And Tom looked
and looked, and listened ; and he would have been very
happy, if he could only have seen the water- babies.
Then when the tide turned, he left the buoy, and swam
round and round in search of them : but in vain. Some¬
times he thought he heard them laughing : but it was
only the laughter of the ripples. And sometimes he
thought he saw them at the bottom : but it was only
white and pink shells. And once he was sure he had
found one, for he saw two bright eyes peeping out of the
sand. So he dived down, and began scraping the sand
awTay, and cried, “ Don’t hide ; I do want some one to
play with so much !” And out jumped a great turbot
with his ugly eyes and mouth all awry, and flopped away
along the bottom, knocking poor Tom over. And he
sat down at the bottom of the sea, and cried salt tears
from sheer disappointment.

To have come all this way, and faced so many
dangers, and yet to find no water-babies ! How hard !
Well, it did seem hard: but people, even little babies,
cannot have all they want without waiting for it, and
working for it too, my little man, as you will find out
some day.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND BABY.

1 5 7

And Tom sat upon the buoy long clays, long weeks,
looking out to sea, and wondering when the water-babies
would come back ; and yet they never came.

Then he began to ask all the strange things which
came in out of the sea if they had seen any ; and some
said “Yes,” and some said nothing at all.

He asked the bass and the pollock ; but they were
so greedy after the shrimps that they did not care to
answer him a word.

Then there came in a whole fleet of purple sea-snails,
lloating along, each on a sponge full of foam, and Tom
said, “Where do you come from, you pretty creatures?
and have you seen the water-babies ?”

And the sea-snails answered, “Whence we come we
know not ; and whither we are going, who can tell ? We
float out our life in the mid-ocean, with the warm sun¬
shine above our heads, and the warm gulf-stream below ;
and that is enough for us. Yes; perhaps we have seen
the water-babies. We have seen many strange things
as we sailed along.” And they floated away, the happy
stupid things, and all went ashore upon the sands.

Then there came in a great lazy sunfish, as big as a
fat pig cut in half ; and he seemed to have been cut in
half too, and squeezed in a clothes-press till he was flat ;

1 5S THE WATER-BABIES:

but to all his big body and big fins he had only a little
rabbit’s mouth, no bigger than Tom’s ; and, when Tom
questioned him, he answered in a little squeaky feeble voice :

“ I’m sure I don’t know ; I’ve lost my way. I meant
to go to the Chesapeake, and I’m afraid I’ve got wrong
somehow. Dear me ! it was all by following that plea¬
sant warm water. I’m sure I’ve lost my way.”

And, when Tom
asked him again, he
could only answer, “ I’ve
lost my way. Don’t talk
to me ; I want to think.”

But, like a good
many other people, the
more he tried to think
the less he could think ;
and Tom saw him blundering about all day, till the coast-
guardsmen saw his big fin above the water, and rowed
out, and struck a boat-hook into him, and took him
away. They took him up to the town and showed him
for a penny a head, and made a good day’s work of it.
But of course Tom did not know that.

Then there came by a shoal ot porpoises, rolling as
they went — papas, and mammas, and little children — and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 159

all quite smooth and shiny, because the fairies French-
polish them every morning ; and they sighed so softly as
they came by, that Tom took courage to speak to them :
but all they answered was, “ Hush, hush, hush for that
was all they had learnt to say.

And then there came a shoal of basking sharks, some
of them as long as a boat, and Tom was frightened at
them. But they were very lazy good-natured fellows,
not greedy tyrants, like white sharks and blue sharks and
ground sharks and hammer-heads, who eat men, or saw¬
fish and threshers and ice-sharks, who hunt the poor old
whales. They came and rubbed their great sides against
the buoy, and lay basking in the sun with their backfins
out of water; and winked at Tom : but he never could
get them to speak. They had eaten so many herrings
that they were quite stupid ; and Tom was glad when a
collier brig came by and frightened them all away ; for
they did smell most horribly, certainly, and he had to
hold his nose tight as long as they were there.

And then there came by a beautiful creature, like a
ribbon of pure silver with a sharp head and very long teeth ;
but it seemed very sick and sad. Sometimes it rolled
helpless on its side ; and then it dashed away glittering
like white fire ; and then it lay sick again and motionless.

1 60 THE WATER-BABIES:

“Where do you come from?” asked Tom. “And
why are you so sick and sad ?”

“ I come from the warm Carolinas, and the sand¬
banks fringed with pines ; where the great owl-rays leap
and flap, like giant bats, upon the tide. But I wandered
north and north, upon the treacherous warm gulf-stream,
till I met with the cold icebergs, afloat in the mid ocean.
So I got tangled among the icebergs, and chilled with
their frozen breath. But the water- babies helped me
from among them, and set me free again. And now I
am mending every day ; but I am very sick and sad ;
and perhaps I shall never get home again to play with
the owl-rays any more.”

“Oh!” cried Tom. “And you have seen water-
babies ? Have you seen any near here ?”

“Yes; they helped me again last night, or I should
have been eaten by a great black porpoise.”

How vexatious ! The water-babies close to him, and
yet he could not find one.

J

And then he left the buoy, and used to go along the
sands and round the rocks, and come out in the night —
like the forsaken Merman in Mr. Arnold’s beautiful,
beautiful poem, which you must learn by heart some day
— and sit upon a point of rock, among the shining sea-

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 161

weeds, in the low October tides, and cry and call for the
water-babies ; but he never heard a voice call in return.
And at last, with his fretting and crying, he grew quite
lean and thin.

But one day among the rocks he found a playfellow.
It was not a water-baby, alas ! but it was a lobster ; and
a very distinguished lobster he was ; for he had live
barnacles on his claws, which is a great mark of distinc¬
tion in lobsterdom, and no more to be bought for money
than a good conscience or the Victoria Cross.

Tom had never seen a lobster before ; and he was
mightily taken with this one ; for he thought him the
most curious, odd, ridiculous creature he had ever seen ;
and there he was not far wrong ; for all the ingenious
men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men,
in the world, with all the old German bogy-painters into
the bargain, could never invent, if all their wits were
boiled into one, anything so curious, and so ridiculous, as
a lobster.

He had one claw knobbed and the other jagged ; and
Tom delighted in watching him hold on to the seaweed
with his knobbed claw, while he cut up salads with his
jagged one, and then put them into his mouth, after
smelling at them, like a monkey. And always the little

M

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

1 6

barnacles threw out their casting- nets, and swept the
water, and came in for their share of whatever there was
for dinner.

But Tom was most astonished to see how he fired
himself off — snap ! like the leap-frogs which you make
out of a goose’s breast-bone. Certainly he took the most
wonderful shots, and backwards, too. For, if he wanted
to go into a narrow crack ten yards off, what do you
think he did ? If he had gone in head foremost, of
course he could not have turned round. So he used to
turn his tail to it, and lay his long horns, which carry his
sixth sense in their tips (and nobody knows what that
sixth sense is), straight down his back to guide him, and
twist his eyes back till they almost came out of their
sockets, and then made ready, present, fire, snap ! — and
away he went, pop into the hole ; and peeped out and
twiddled his whiskers, as much as to say, ‘‘You couldn’t
do that.”

Tom asked him about water-babies. “ Yes,” he said.
He had seen them often. But he did not think much of
them. They were meddlesome little creatures, that went
about helping fish and shells which got into scrapes.
Well, for his part, he should be ashamed to be helped by
little soft creatures that had not even a shell on their

164 THE WATER-BABIES:

backs. He had lived quite long enough in the world to
take care of himself.

He was a conceited fellow, the old lobster, and not
very civil to Tom ; and you will hear how he had to alter
his mind before he was done, as conceited people gener¬
ally have. But he was so funny, and Tom so lonely, that
he could not quarrel with him ; and they used to sit in
holes in the rocks, and chat for hours.

And about this time there happened to Tom a very
strange and important adventure — so important, indeed,
that he was very near never finding the water-babies at
all ; and I am sure you would have been sorry for that.

I hope that you have not forgotten the little white
lady all this while. At least, here she comes, looking
like a clean white good little darling, as she always was,
and always will be. For it befell in the pleasant short
December days, when the wind always blows from the
south-west, till Old Father Christmas comes and spreads
the great white table-cloth, ready for little boys and girls
to give the birds their Christmas dinner of crumbs — it
befell (to go on) in the pleasant December days, that Sir
John was so busy hunting that nobody at home could get
a word out of him. Four days a week he hunted, and
very good sport he had ; and the other two he went to

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 165

the bench and the board of guardians, and very good
justice he did ; and, when he got home in time, he dined
at five ; for he hated this absurd new fashion of dining at
eight in the hunting season, which forces a man to make
interest with the footman for cold beef and beer as soon
as he comes in, and so spoil his appetite, and then sleep
in an arm-chair in his bedroom, all stiff and tired, for
two or three hours before he can get his dinner like a
gentleman. And do you be like Sir John, my dear little
man, when you are your own master ; and, if you want
either to read hard or ride hard, stick to the good old
Cambridge hours of breakfast at eight and dinner at five,
by which you may get two days work out of one. But,
of course, if you find a fox at three in the afternoon and
run him till dark, and leave off twenty miles from home,
why you must wait for your dinner till you can get it, as
better men than you have done. Only see that, if you
go hungry, your horse does not : but give him his warm
gruel and beer, and take him gently home, remembering
that good horses don’t grow on the hedge like black¬
berries.

It befell (to go on a second time) that Sir John, hunt¬
ing all day, and dining at five, fell asleep every evening,
and snored so terribly that all the windows in Harthover

166 THE WATER-BABIES:

shook, and the soot fell down the chimneys. Whereon
My Lady, being no more able to get conversation out of
him than a song out of a dead nightingale, determined to
go off and leave him, and the doctor, and Captain Swinger

the agent, to snore in concert every evening to their
hearts’ content. So she started for the seaside with all
the children, in order to put herself and them into con¬
dition by mild applications of iodine. She might as well
have stayed at home and used Parry’s liquid horse-blister,
for there was plenty of it in the stables ; and then she
would have saved her money, and saved the chance, also,
of making all the children ill instead of well (as hundreds

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 167

are made), by taking them to some nasty smelling un¬
drained lodging, and then wondering how they caught
scarlatina and diphtheria : but people won’t be wise
enough to understand that till they are dead of bad
smells, and then it will be too late : besides, you see, Sir
John did certainly snore very loud.

But where she went to nobody must know, for fear
young ladies should begin to fancy that there are water-
babies there ! and so hunt and howk after them (besides
raising the price of lodgings), and keep them in aquariums,
as the ladies at Pompeii (as you may see by the paintings)
used to keep Cupids in cages. But nobody ever heard
that they starved the Cupids, or let them die of dirt and
neglect, as English young ladies do by the poor sea-
beasts. So nobody must know where My Lady went.
Letting water-babies die is as bad as taking singing-birds’
eggs ; for, though there are thousands, ay, millions, ol
both of them in the world, yet there is not one too many.

Now it befell that, on the very shore, and over the
very rocks, where Tom was sitting with his friend the
lobster, there walked one day the little white lady, Ellie
herself, and with her a very wise man indeed — Professor
Ptthmllnsprts.

His mother was a Dutchwoman, and therefore he was

1 68 THE WATER-BABIES:

born at Curacao (of course you have learnt your geo¬
graphy, and therefore know why) ; and his father a Pole,
and therefore he was brought up at Petropaulowski (of
course you have learnt your modern politics, and there¬

fore know why) : but for all that he was as thorough an
Englishman as ever coveted his neighbour’s goods. And
his name, as 1 said, was Professor Ptthmllnsprts, which
is a very ancient and noble Polish name.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 169

He was, as I said, a very great naturalist, and chief
professor of Necrobioneopalceonthydrochthonanthropopithe-
kology in the new university which the king of the
Cannibal Islands had founded ; and, being a member of
the Acclimatisation Society, he had come here to collect
all the nasty things which he could find on the coast
of England, and turn them loose round the Cannibal
Islands, because they had not nasty things enough there
to eat what they left.

But he was a very worthy kind good-natured little
old gentleman ; and very fond of children (for he was
not the least a cannibal himself) ; and very good to all
the world as long as it was good to him. Only one
fault he had, which cock-robins have likewise, as you
may see if you look out of the nursery-window — that,
when any one else found a curious worm, he would hop
round them, and peck them, and set up his tail, and
bristle up his feathers, just as a cock-robin would ; and
declare that he found the worm first ; and that it was his
worm ; and, if not, that then it was not a worm at all.

He had met Sir John at Scarborough, or Fleetwood,
or somewhere or other (if you don’t care where, nobody
else does), and had made acquaintance with him, and
become very fond of his children. Now, Sir John knew

i 7o THE WATER-BABIES:

nothing about sea-cockyolybirds, and cared less, provided
the fishmonger sent him good fish for dinner ; and My
Lady knew as little : but she thought it proper that the
children should know something. For in the stupid old
times, you must understand, children were taught to
know one thing, and to know it well ; but in these
enlightened new times they are taught to know a little
about everything, and to know it all ill ; which is a
great deal pleasanter and easier, and therefore quite right.

So Ellie and he were walking on the rocks, and he
was showing her about one in ten thousand of all the
beautiful and curious things which are to be seen there.
But little Ellie was not satisfied with them at all. She
liked much better to play with live children, or even
with dolls, which she could pretend were alive ; and at
last she said honestly, “ I don’t care about all these
things, because they can’t play with me, or talk to me.
If there were little children now in the water, as there
used to be, and I could see them, I should like that.”

“Children in the water, you strange little duck?”
said the professor.

“Yes,” said Ellie. “I know there used to be chil¬
dren in the water, and mermaids too, and mermen. I
saw them all in a picture at home, of a beautiful lady

A FAIRY TALK FOR A LAND-BABY.

sailing in a car drawn by dolphins, and babies flying
round her, and one sitting in her lap ; and the mermaids

swimming and playing, and the mermen trumpeting on
conch-shells ; and it is called ‘ The Triumph of Galatea
and there is a burning mountain in the picture behind.

1 7 2 THE WATER-BABIES:

It hangs on the great staircase, and I have looked at it
ever since I was a baby, and dreamt about it a hundred
times ; and it is so beautiful, that it must be true.”

But the professor had not the least notion of allowing
that things were true, merely because people thought
them beautiful. For at that rate, he said, the Baltas
would be quite right in thinking it a fine thing to eat
their grandpapas, because they thought it an ugly thing
to put them underground. The professor, indeed, went
further, and held that no man was forced to believe any¬
thing to be true, but what he could see, hear, taste, or
handle.

He held very strange theories about a good many
things. He had even got up once at the British Asso¬
ciation, and declared that apes had hippopotamus majors
in their brains just as men have. Which was a shocking
thing to say ; for, if it were so, what would become of
the faith, hope, and charity of immortal millions ? You
may think that there are other more important differ¬
ences between you and an ape, such as being able to
speak, and make machines, and know right from wrong,
and say your prayers, and other little matters of that
kind; but that is a child’s fancy, my dear. Nothing is
to be depended on but the great hippopotamus test. If

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 173

you have an hippopotamus major in your brain, you are
no ape, though you had four hands, no feet, and were
more apish than the apes of all aperies. But if a hippo¬
potamus major is ever discovered in one single ape’s
brain, nothing will save your great-great-great-great-
great-great-great-great-great-great-great-greater-greatest-
grandmother from having been an ape too. No, my dear
little man ; always remember that the one true, certain,
final, and all important difference between you and an
ape is, that you have a hippopotamus major in your
brain, and it has none ; and that, therefore, to discover
one in its brain will be a very wrong and dangerous
thing, at which every one will be very much shocked, as
we may suppose they were at the professor. — Though
really, after all, it don’t much matter ; because — as Lord
Dundreary and others would put it — nobody but men
have hippopotamuses in their brains ; so, if a hippo¬
potamus was discovered in an ape’s brain, why it would
not be one, you know, but something else.

But the professor had gone, I am sorry to say, even
further than that ; for he had read at the British Asso¬
ciation at Melbourne, Australia, in the year 1999, a
paper, which assured every one who found himself the
better or wiser for the news, that there were not, never

i74 THE WATER-BABIES:

had been, and could not be, any rational or half-rational
beings except men, anywhere, anywhen, or anyhow ; that
nymphs , satyrs , fauns , inui , dwarfs, trolls, elves, gnomes,
fairies, brownies, nixes, wills, kobolds, leprechaunes, cluri-
caunes, banshees, will-o -the -wisps, follets, lutins, magots,
goblins, afrits , marids, jinns, ghouls, peris, dcevs , angels,
archangels, imps, bogies, or worse, were nothing at all,
and pure bosh and wind. And he had to get up very
early in the morning to prove that, and to eat his break¬
fast overnight ; but he did it, at least to his own satisfac¬
tion. Whereon a certain great divine, and a very clever
divine was he, called him a regular Sadducee ; and prob¬
ably he was quite right. Whereon the professor, in
return, called him a regular Pharisee ; and probably he
was quite right too. But they did not quarrel in the
least ; for, when men are men of the world, hard words
run off them like water off a duck’s back. So the pro¬
fessor and the divine met at dinner that evening, and sat
together on the sofa afterwards for an hour, and talked
over the state of female labour on the antarctic continent
(for nobody talks shop after his claret), and each vowed
that the other was the best company he ever met in his
life. What an advantage it is to be men of the world !

From all which you may guess that the professor was

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 175

not the least of little Elbe’s opinion. So he gave her
a succinct compendium of his famous paper at the British
Association, in a form suited for the youthful mind. But,
as we have gone over his arguments against water-babies
once already, which is once too often, we will not repeat
them here.

Now little Ellie was, 1 suppose, a stupid little girl ;
for, instead of being convinced by Professor Ptthmllnsprts’
arguments, she only asked the same question over again.

“ But why are there not water-babies ?”

I trust and hope that it was because the professor
trod at that moment on the edge of a very sharp mussel,
and hurt one of his corns sadly, that he answered quite
sharply, forgetting that he was a scientific man, and
therefore ought to have known that he couldn’t know ;
and that he was a logician, and therefore ought to have
known that he could not prove a universal negative — 1
say, I trust and hope it was because the mussel hurt his
corn, that the professor answered quite sharply :

“ Because there ain’t.”

Which was not even good English, my dear little
boy ; for, as you must know from Aunt Agitate’s Argu¬
ments, the professor ought to have said, if he was so
angry as to say anything of the kind — Because there are

176 THE WATER-BABIES:

not : or are none : or are none of them ; or (if he had
been reading Aunt Agitate too) because they do not
exist.

And he groped with his net under the weeds so
violently, that, as it befell, he caught poor little Tom.

He felt the net very heavy ; and lifted it out quickly,
with Tom all entangled in the meshes.

“Dear me!” he cried. “What a large pink Holo-
thurian ; with hands, too! It must be connected with
Synapta.”

And he took him out.

“ It has actually eyes !” he cried. “Why, it must be
a Cephalopod ! This is most extraordinary !”

“No, I ain't!” cried Tom, as loud as he could; for
he did not like to be called bad names.

“It is a water-baby !” cried Elbe; and of course it
was.

“ Water- fiddlesticks, my dear!” said the professor:
and he turned away sharply.

There was no denying it. It was a water-baby : and
he had said a moment ago that there were none. What
was he to do ?

He would have liked, of course, to have taken Tom
home in a bucket. He would not have put him in

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 177

spirits. Of course not. He would have kept him alive,
and petted him (for he was a very kind old gentleman),
and written a book about him, and given him two long
names, of which the first would have said a little about
Tom, and the second all about himself ; for of course he
would have called him Hydrotecnon Ptthmllnsprtsianum,
or some other long name like that ; for they are forced
to call everything by long names now, because they have
used up all the short ones, ever since they took to making
nine species out of one. But — what would all the learned
men say to him after his speech at the British Associa¬
tion ? And what would Ellie say, after what he had just
told her ?

There was a wise old heathen once, who said,
“ Maxima debetur pueris reverentia” — The greatest
reverence is due to children ; that is, that grown people
should never say or do anything wrong before children,
lest they should set them a bad example. — Cousin Cram-
child says it means, “The greatest respectfulness is
expected from little boys.” But he was raised in a
country where little boys are not expected to be respect¬
ful, because all of them are as good as the President : —
Well, every one knows his own concerns best ; so per¬
haps they are. But poor Cousin Cramchild, to do him

N

THE WATER-BABIES :

178

justice, not being of that opinion, and having a moral
mission, and being no scholar to speak of, and hard up
for an authority — why, it was a very great temptation for
him. But some people, and I am afraid the professor
was one of them, interpret that in a more strange, curious,
one-sided, left-handed, topsy-turvy, inside-out, behind-
before fashion than even Cousin Cramchilcl ; for they
make it mean, that you must show your respect for
children, by never confessing yourself in the wrong to
them, even if you know that you are so, lest they should
lose confidence in their elders.

Now, if the professor had said to Ellie, “Yes, my
darling, it is a water-baby, and a very wonderful thing it
is ; and it shows how little I know of the wonders of
nature, in spite of forty years’ honest labour. I was just
telling you that there could be no such creatures ; and,
behold ! here is one come to confound my conceit and
show me that Nature can do, and has done, beyond all
that man’s poor fancy can imagine. So, let us thank the
Maker, and Inspirer, and Lord of Nature for all His
wonderful and glorious works, and try and find out
something about this one — I think that, if the professor
had said that, little Ellie would have believed him more
firmly, and respected him more deeply, and loved him

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 179

better, than ever she had done before. But he was of a
different opinion. He hesitated a moment. He longed
to keep Tom, and yet he half wished he never had
caught him ; and at last he quite longed to get rid of
him. So he turned away and poked Tom with his
finger, for want of anything better to do ; and said
carelessly, “ My dear little maid, you must have dreamt
of water- babies last night, your head is so full of
them.”

Now Tom had been in the most horrible and un¬
speakable fright all the while ; and had kept as quiet as
he could, though he was called a Holothurian and a
Cephalopod ; for it was fixed in his little head that if a
man with clothes on caught him, he might put clothes on
him too, and make a dirty black chimney-sweep of him
again. But, when the professor poked him, it was more
than he could bear ; and, between fright and rage, he
turned to bay as valiantly as a mouse in a corner, and bit
the professor’s finger till it bled.

“ Oh ! ah ! yah !” cried he ; and glad of an excuse to
be rid of Tom, dropped him on to the seaweed, and
thence he dived into the water and was gone in a
moment.

“But it was a water-baby, and 1 heard it speak!”

1 80 THE WATER-BABIES:

cried Ellie. “Ah, it is gone!” And she jumped down
off the rock to try and catch Tom before he slipped into
the sea.

Too late ! and what was worse, as she sprang down,
she slipped, and fell some six feet, with her head on a
sharp rock, and lay quite still

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 181

The professor picked her up, and tried to waken her,
and called to her, and cried over her, for he loved her
very much : but she would not waken at all. So he took
her up in his arms and carried her to her governess, and
they all went home ; and little Elbe was put to bed, and
lay there quite still ; only now and then she woke up
and called out about the water-baby : but no one knew
what she meant, and the professor did not tell, for he was
ashamed to tell.

And, after a week, one moonlight night, the fairies
came flying in at the window and brought her such a
pretty pair of wings that she could not help putting them
on ; and she flew with them out of the window, and over
the land, and over the sea, and up through the clouds,
and nobody heard or saw anything of her for a very long
while.

And this is why they say that no one has ever yet
seen a water-baby. For my part, I believe that the
naturalists get dozens of them when they are out dredg¬
ing : but they say nothing about them, and throw them
overboard again, for fear of spoiling their theories. But,
you see the professor was found out, as every one is in
due time. A very terrible old fairy found the professor
out ; she felt his bumps, and cast his nativity, and took

1 82 THE WATER-BABIES.

the lunars of him carefully inside and out ; and so she
knew what he would do as well as if she had seen it in a
print book, as they say in the dear old west country ; and
he did it ; and so he was found beforehand, as everybody
always is ; and the old fairy will find out the naturalists
some day, and put them in the Times ; and then on
whose side will the laugh be ?

So the old fairy took him in hand very severely there
and then. But she says she is always most severe with
the best people, because there is most chance of curing
them, and therefore they are the patients who pay her
best ; for she has to work on the same salary as the
Emperor of China’s physicians (it is a pity that all do
not), no cure, no pay.

So she took the poor professor in hand : and because
he was not content with things as they are, she filled his
head with things as they are not, to try if he would like
them better ; and because he did not choose to believe in
a water-baby when he saw it, she made him believe in
worse things than water-babies — in unicorns, fire-drakes,
manticoras, basilisks, amphisboenas, griffins, phoenixes, rocs,
ores, dog -headed men, three- headed dogs , three- bodied
geryons, and other pleasant creatures, which folks think
never existed yet, and which folks hope never will exist,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 183

though they know nothing about the matter, and never
will ; and these creatures so upset, terrified, flustered,
aggravated, confused, astounded, horrified, and totally
flabbergasted the poor professor that the doctors said
that he was out of his wits for three months ; and per¬
haps they were right, as they are now and then.

So all the doctors in the county were called in to
make a report on his case ; and of course every one of
them flatly contradicted the other : else what use is there
in being men of science ? But at last the majority agreed
on a report, in the true medical language, one half bad
Latin, the other half worse Greek, and the rest what
might have been English, if they had only learnt to write
it. And this is the beginning thereof —

“ The subanhypaposupernal anastomoses oj peritomic
diacellurite in the encephalo digital region of the distin¬
guished individual of whose symptomatic phenomena we
had the melancholy honour ( subsequently to a preliminary
diagnostic inspection ) of making an inspectorial diagnosis ,
presenting the interexclusively quadrilateral and antinomian
diathesis known as Bump ster hausen s blue follicles , we
proceeded ” —

But what they proceeded to do My Lady never knew ;
for she was so frightened at the long words that she ran

1 84 THE WATER-BABIES:

for her life, and locked herself into her bedroom, for fear
of being squashed by the words and strangled by the
sentence. A boa constrictor, she said, was bad company
enough : but what was a boa constrictor made of paving-
stones ?

“It was quite shocking ! What can they think is the
matter with him ?” said she to the old nurse.

“ That his wit's just addled ; may be wi’ unbelief and
heathenry,” quoth she.

“ Then why can’t they say so ?”

And the heaven, and the sea, and the rocks, and the
vales re-echoed — “ Why indeed ?” But the doctors never
heard them.

So she made Sir John write to the Times to command
the Chancellor of the Exchequer for the time being to
put a tax on long words ; —

A light tax on words over three syllables, which are
necessary evils, like rats : but, like them, must be kept
down judiciously.

A heavy tax on words over four syllables, as hetero¬
doxy , spontaneity , spiritualism , spuriosity , etc.

And on words over five syllables (of which I hope no
one will wish to see any examples), a totally prohibitory
tax.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 185

And a similar prohibitory tax on words derived from
three or more languages at once ; words derived from
two languages having become so common that there was
no more hope of rooting out them than of rooting out
peth-winds.

The Chancellor of the Exchequer, being a scholar
and a man of sense, jumped at the notion ; for he saw in
it the one and only plan for abolishing Schedule D : but
when he brought in his bill, most of the Irish members,
and (I am sorry to say) some of the Scotch likewise,
opposed it most strongly, on the ground that in a free
country no man was bound either to understand himself
or to let others understand him. So the bill fell through
on the first reading ; and the Chancellor, being a philo¬
sopher, comforted himself with the thought that it was
not the first time that a woman had hit off a grand idea
and the men turned up their stupid noses thereat.

Now the doctors had it all their own way; and to
work they went in earnest, and they gave the poor pro¬
fessor divers and sundry medicines, as prescribed by the
ancients and moderns, from Hippocrates to Feuchters-
leben, as below, viz. —

1. Hellebore , to wit —

Hellebore of /Eta.

1 86 THE WATER-BABIES:

Hellebore of Galatia.

Hellebore of Sicily.

And all other Hellebores, after the method
of the Helleborising Helleborists of the
Helleboric era. But that would not do.
B umpster hausen s blue follicles would not
stir an inch out of his encephalo digital
region.

2. Trying to find out what was the matter with him ,
after the method of

Hippocrates ,

A retceus ,

Celszts,

Coelius A urelianus ,

And Galen.

But they found that a great deal too much trouble, as
most people have since ; and so had recourse to —

3. Borage.

Cauteries.

Boring a hole in his head to let out fumes, which
(says Gordonius) “will, without doubt, do much good.”
But it didn’t.

Bezoar stone.

D iamargaritum.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 187

A ranis brain boiled in spice.

Oil of wormwood.

Water of N He.

Capers.

Good wine ( but there was none to be got).

The water of a smith's forge.

Hops.

A mbergris.

Mandrake pillows.

Dormouse fat.

Hares ears.

Starvation.

Camphor.

Salts and senna.

Musk.

Opium.

Strait-waistcoats.

Bullyings.

Bumpings.

B listenings.

Bleedings.

Bucketings with cold water.

Knockings down.

Kneeling on his chest till they broke it in, etc.

188 THE WATER-BABIES:

etc. ; after ' the rnediceval or monkish method :
but that would not do. Bumpsterhauservs
blue follicles stuck there still.

Then —

4. Coaxing.

Kissing.

Champagne and turtle.

Red herrings and soda water.

Good advice.

Gardening.

Croquet.

Musical soirdes.

Aunt Sally.

Mild tobacco.

The Saturday Rcviezv.

A carriage with outriders , etc. etc.

After the modern method. But that would not do.
And if he had but been a convict lunatic, and had
shot at the Oueen, killed all his creditors to avoid paying
them, or indulged in any other little amiable eccentricity
of that kind, they would have given him in addition —
The healthiest situation in England, on Easthamp-
stead Plain.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 189

Free run of Windsor Forest.

The Times every morning.

A double-barrelled gun and pointers, and leave to
shoot three Wellington College boys a week (not more)
in case black game were scarce.

But as he was neither mad enough nor bad enough
to be allowed such luxuries, they grew desperate, and
fell into bad ways, viz. —

5. Suff mitigations of sulphur.

Herrwiggius his “ Incomparable drink for
madmen /”

Only they could not find out what it was.

Suff mitigation of the liver of the fish # # #
Only they had forgotten its name, so Dr. Gray could
not well procure them a specimen.

Metallic tractors.

Holloway s Ointment.

Electro-biology.

Valentine Greatrakes his Stroking Cure.

Sp irit- rapp ing.

Holloway s Pills.

Table-turning.

M orison s Pills.

Homoeopathy.

i9o THE WATER-BABIES:

Parr s Life Pills.

Mesmerism.

Pitre Bosh.

Exorcisms , for which they read Maleus
Malefic arum, Nideri Formic ar mm, Delno,
Wierus, etc.

But could not get one that mentioned water-babies.

Hydropathy.

Madame Rachel s Elixir of Youth.

The Poughkeepsie Seer his Prophecies.

The distilled liquor of addle eggs.

Pyropathy.

As successfully employed by the old inquisitors to
cure the malady of thought, and now by the Persian
Mollahs to cure that of rheumatism.

Geopathy, or burying him.

Atmopathy , or steaming him.

Sympathy, after the method of Basil Valen¬
tine his Triumph of Antimony, and Kenelm
Digby his Weapon- salve, which some call
a hair of the dog that bit him.

Hermopathy, or pouring mercury down his
throat to move the animal spirits.

Meteoropathy, or going up to the moon to look

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 191

for his lost wits , as Ruggiero did for
Orlando Furioso s : only , having no hippo-
griff \ they were forced to use a balloon ;
and , falling into the North Sea , were
picked up by a Yarmouth herring-boat , and
came home much the wiser , and all over
scales.

Antipathy , or using him like “ a man and a
brother^

Apathy , or doing nothing at all .

fF//// all other ipathies and opathies which
Noodle has invented , and Foodie tried , since
black -fellows chipped flints at Abbdville —
which is a considerable time ago , to judge
by the Great Exhibition.

But nothing would do ; for he screamed and cried all
day for a water- baby, to come and drive away the
monsters ; and of course they did not try to find one,
because they did not believe in them, and were thinking
of nothing but Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles ; having,
as usual, set the cart before the horse, and taken the
effect for the cause.

So they were forced at last to let the poor professor

192 THE WATER-BABIES:

ease his mind by writing a great book, exactly contrary
to all his old opinions ; in which he proved that the
moon was made of green cheese, and that all the mites
in it (which you may see sometimes quite plain through
a telescope, if you will only keep the lens dirty enough,
as Mr. Weekes kept his voltaic battery) are nothing in
the world but little babies, who are hatching and swarm¬
ing up there in millions, ready to come down into this
world whenever children want a new little brother or sister.

Which must be a mistake, for this one reason : that,
there being no atmosphere round the moon (though some
one or other says there is, at least on the other side, and
that he has been round at the back of it to see, and found
that the moon was just the shape of a Bath bun, and so
wet that the man in the moon went about on Midsummer-
day in Macintoshes and Cording’s boots, spearing eels
and sneezing) ; that, therefore, I say, there being no
atmosphere, there can be no evaporation ; and, therefore,
the dew-point can never fall below 71*5° below zero of
Fahrenheit : and, therefore, it cannot be cold enough
there about four o’clock in the morning to condense the
babies’ mesenteric apophthegms into their left ventricles ;
and, therefore, they can never catch the hooping-cough ;
and if they do not have hooping-cough, they cannot be

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 193

babies at all ; and, therefore, there are no babies in the
moon. — O.E.D.

Which may seem a roundabout reason ; and so,

perhaps, it is : but you will have heard worse ones in
your time, and from better men than you are.

But one thing is certain ; that, when the good old

o

i94 THE WATER-BABIES:

doctor got his book written, he felt considerably relieved
from Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and a few things
infinitely worse ; to wit, from pride and vain-glory, and
from blindness and hardness of heart ; which are the
true causes of Bumpsterhausen’s blue follicles, and of a
good many other ugly things besides. Whereon the loul
flood-water in his brains ran down, and cleared to a fine
coffee colour, such as fish like to rise in, till very fine
clean fresh-run fish did begin to rise in his brains ; and
he caught two or three of them (which is exceedingly
fine sport, for brain rivers), and anatomised them care¬
fully, and never mentioned what he found out from them,
except to little children ; and became ever after a sadder
and a wiser man ; which is a very good thing to become,
my dear little boy, even though one has to pay a heavy
price for the blessing.

“ Stern Lawgiver ! yet thou dost wear
The Godhead’s most benignant grace ;

Nor know we anything so fair.

As is the smile upon thy face :

Flowers laugh before thee on their beds ;

And fragrance in thy footing treads ;

Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong ;

And the most ancient Heavens, through Thee are fresh and
strong.”

Wordsworth, Ode to Duty.

CHAPTER V.

UT what became of little
Tom ?

He slipped away off
the rocks into the water,
as I said before. But
he could not help
thinking of little Ellie.
He did not remember
who she was ; but he
knew that she was a
little girl, though she
was a hundred times
as big as he. That is
not surprising : size has nothing to do with kindred.
A tiny weed may be first cousin to a great tree ; and
a little dog like Vick knows that Lioness is a dog
too, though she is twenty times larger than herself.

198 THE WATER-BABIES:

So Tom knew that Ellie was a little girl, and thought
about her all that day, and longed to have had her
to play with ; but he had very soon to think of
something' else. And here is the account of what
happened to him, as it was published next morning in
the Waterproof Gazette, on the finest watered paper, for
the use of the great fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, who
reads the news very carefully every morning, and especi¬
ally the police cases, as you will hear very soon.

He was going along the rocks in three-fathom water,
watching the pollock catch prawns, and the wrasses
nibble barnacles off the rocks, shells and all, when he
saw a round cage of green withes ; and inside it, looking
very much ashamed of himself, sat his friend the lobster,
twiddling his horns, instead of thumbs.

“What, have you been naughty, and have they put
you in the lock-up ?” asked Tom.

The lobster felt a little indignant at such a notion,
but he was too much depressed in spirits to argue ; so
he only said, “ I can’t get out.”

“ Why did you get in ? ”

“After that nasty piece of dead fish.” He had
thought it looked and smelt very nice when he was out¬
side, and so it did, for a lobster : but now he turned

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 199

round and abused it because he was angry with him¬
self.

“ Where did you get in ? ”

“ Through that round hole at the top."

“ Then why don’t you get out through it ?”

“ Because I can’t : ’’ and the lobster twiddled his
horns more fiercely than ever, but he was forced to
confess.

“ I have jumped upwards, downwards, backwards,
and sideways, at least four thousand times; and I can’t
get out : I always get up underneath there, and can’t find
the hole.”

Tom looked at the trap, and having more wit than
the lobster, he saw plainly enough what was the matter ;
as you may if you will look at a lobster-pot.

“Stop a bit,” said Tom. “Turn your tail up to me,
and I'll pull you through hindforemost, and then you
won’t stick in the spikes.”

But the lobster was so stupid and clumsy that he
couldn’t hit the hole. Like a great many fox-hunters,
he was very sharp as long as he was in his own country ;
but as soon as they get out of it they lose their heads ;
and so the lobster, so to speak, lost his tail.

Tom reached and clawed down the hole after him,

200 THE .WATER-BABIES :

till he caught hold of him ; and then, as was to be
expected, the clumsy lobster pulled him in head foremost.

“Hullo! here is a pretty business,” said Tom.

“ Now take your great claws, and break the points off
those spikes, and then we shall both get out easily.”

“ Dear me, I never thought of that,” said the lobster ;
“ and after all the experience of life that I have had ! ”

You see, experience is of very little good unless a
man, or a lobster, has wit enough to make use of it. For
a good many people, like old Polonius, have seen all the
world, and yet remain little better than children after all.

But they had not got half the spikes away when they
saw a great dark cloud over them : and lo, and behold,
it was the otter.

How she did grin and grin when she saw Tom.
“ Yar!” said she, “you little meddlesome wretch, I have
you now ! I will serve you out for telling the salmon
where I was !” And she crawled all over the pot to get
in.

Tom was horribly frightened, and still more frightened
when she found the hole in the top, and squeezed herself
right down through it, all eyes and teeth. But no sooner
was her head inside than valiant Mr. Lobster caught her
by the nose, and held on.

202 THE WATER-BABIES:

And there they were all three in the pot, rolling over
and over, and very tight packing it was. And the lobster
tore at the otter, and the otter tore at the lobster, and
both squeezed and thumped poor Tom till he had no
breath left in his body ; and I don’t know what would
have happened to him if he had not at last got on the
otter’s back, and safe out of the hole.

He was right glad when he got out : but he would
not desert his friend who had saved him ; and the first
time he saw his tail uppermost he caught hold of it, and
pulled with all his might.

But the lobster would not let go.

“Come along,” said Tom; “don’t you see she is
dead ?” And so she was, quite drowned and dead.

And that was the end of the wicked otter.

But the lobster would not let go.

“ Come along, you stupid old stick-in-the-mud,” cried
Tom, “or the fisherman will catch you !” And that was
true, for Tom felt some one above beginning to haul up
the pot.

But the lobster would not let go.

Tom saw the fisherman haul him up to the boatside,
and thought it was all up with him. But when Mr.
Lobster saw the fisherman, he gave such a furious and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY

2 O

tremendous snap, that he snapped out of his hand, and
out of the pot, and safe into the sea. But he left his
knobbed claw behind him ; for it never came into his

stupid head to let go after all, so he just shook his claw
off as the easier method. It was something of a bull,
that ; but you must know the lobster was an Irish lobster,

204 THE WATER-BABIES:

and was hatched off Island Magee at the mouth of
Belfast Lough.

Tom asked the lobster why he never thought of
letting go. He said very determinedly that it was a
point of honour among lobsters. And so it is, as the
Mayor of Plymouth found out once to his cost — eight or
nine hundred years ago, of course ; for if it had happened
lately it would be personal to mention it.

For one day he was so tired with sitting on a hard
chair, in a grand furred gown, with a gold chain round
his neck, hearing one policeman after another come in
and sing, “ What shall we do with the drunken sailor, so
early in the morning ? ” and answering them each exactly
alike :

“ Put him in the round house till he gets sober, so
early in the morning

That, when it was over, he jumped up, and played
leap-frog with the town-clerk till he burst his buttons,
and then had his luncheon, and burst some more buttons,
and then said : “ It is a low spring-tide ; I shall go out
this afternoon and cut my capers.”

Now he did not mean to cut such capers as you eat
with boiled mutton. It was the commandant of artillery
at Valetta who used to amuse himself with cutting them,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 205

and who stuck upon one of the bastions a notice, “No
one allowed to cut capers here but me,” which greatly
edified the midshipmen in port, and the Maltese on the
Nix Mangiare stairs. But all that the mayor meant was
that he would go and have an afternoon’s fun, like any
schoolboy, and catch lobsters with an iron hook.

So to the Mewstone he went, and for lobsters he
looked. And when he came to a certain crack in the
rocks he was so excited that, instead of putting in his
hook, he put in his hand ; and Mr. Lobster was at home,
and caught him by the finger, and held on.

“Yah!” said the mayor, and pulled as hard as he
dared : but the more he pulled, the more the lobster
pinched, till he was forced to be quiet.

Then he tried to get his hook in with his other hand;
but the hole was too narrow.

Then he pulled again ; but he could not stand the pain.

Then he shouted and bawled for help : but there was
no one nearer him than the men-of-war inside the break¬
water.

Then he began to turn a little pale ; for the tide
flowed, and still the lobster held on.

Then he turned quite white ; for the tide was up to
his knees, and still the lobster held on.

Then he thought of cutting off his finger ; but he
wanted two things to do it with — courage and a knife ;
and he had got neither.

Then he turned quite yellow ; for the tide was up to
his waist, and still the lobster held on.

Then he thought over all the naughty things he ever
had done : all the sand which he had put in the sugar,

and the sloe-leaves in the
tea, and the water in the
treacle, and the salt in
the tobacco (because his
Jg brother was a brewer, and
a man must help his own

kin).

Then he turned quite
blue ; for the tide was up
to his breast, and still the
lobster held on.

Then, I have no doubt, he repented fully of all the
said naughty things which he had done, and promised to
mend his life, as too many do when they think they have
no life left to mend. Whereby, as they fancy, they make
a very cheap bargain. But the old fairy with the birch
rod soon undeceives them.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 207

And then he grew all colours at once, and turned up
his eyes like a duck in thunder ; for the water was up to
his chin, and still the lobster held on.

And then came a man-of-war’s boat round the Mew-
stone, and saw his head sticking up out of the water.
One said it was a keg of brandy, and another that it was
a cocoa-nut, and another that it was a buoy loose, and
another that it was a black diver, and wanted to fire at
it, which would not have been pleasant for the mayor :
but just then such a yell came out of a great hole in the
middle of it that the midshipman in charge guessed what
it was, and bade pull up to it as fast as they could. So
somehow or other the Jack-tars got the lobster out, and
set the mayor free, and put him ashore at the Barbican.
He never went lobster-catching again ; and we will hope
he put no more salt in the tobacco, not even to sell his
brother’s beer.

And that is the story of the Mayor of Plymouth,
which has two advantages — first, that of being quite
true ; and second, that of having (as folks say all good
stories ought to have) no moral whatsoever : no more,
indeed, has any part of this book, because it is a fairy
tale, you know.

And now happened to Tom a most wonderful thing ;

2 o8 THE WATER-BABIES:

for he had not left the lobster five minutes before he
came upon a water-baby.

A real live water-baby, sitting on the white sand, very
busy about a little point of rock. And when it saw Tom
it looked up for a moment, and then cried, “ Why, you
are not one of us. You are a new baby! Oh, how
delightful!"

And it ran to Tom, and Tom ran to it, and they
hugged and kissed each other for ever so long, they did
not know why. But they did not want any introductions
there under the water.

At last Tom said, “ Oh, where have you been all this
while ? I have been looking for you so long, and I have
been so lonely."

“We have been here for days and days. There are
hundreds of us about the rocks. How was it you did
not see us, or hear us when we sing and romp every
evening before we go home ?"

Tom looked at the baby again, and then he said :

“Well, this is wonderful! I have seen things just
like you again and again, but I thought you were shells,
or sea-creatures. I never took you for water-babies like
myself."

Now, was not that very odd? So odd, indeed, that

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

209

you will, no doubt, want to know how it happened, and
why Tom could never find a water-baby till after he had
got the lobster out of the pot. And, if you will read this
story nine times over, and then think for yourself, you
will find out why. It is not good for little boys to be
told everything, and never to be forced to use their own
wits. They would learn, then, no more than they do at
Dr. Dulcimer’s famous suburban establishment for the
idler members of the youthful aristocracy, where the
masters learn the lessons and the boys hear them —
which saves a great deal of trouble — for the time being.

“ Now,” said the baby, “come and help me, or I shall
not have finished before my brothers and sisters come,
and it is time to go home.”

“What shall I help you at ?”

“ At this poor dear little rock ; a great clumsy boulder
came rolling by in the last storm, and knocked all its
head off, and rubbed off all its flowers. And now I
must plant it again with seaweeds, and coralline, and
anemones, and I will make it the prettiest little rock-
garden on all the shore.”

So they worked away at the rock, and planted it, and
smoothed the sand down round it, and capital fun they
had till the tide began to turn. And then Tom heard

p

2 1 O

THE WATER-BABIES :

all the other babies coming, laughing and singing and
shouting and romping ; and the noise they made was just
like the noise of the ripple. So he knew that he had
been hearing and seeing the water-babies all along ; only
he did not know them, because his eyes and ears were
not opened.

And in they came, dozens and dozens of them, some
bigger than Tom and some smaller, all in the neatest
little white bathing dresses ; and when they found that
he was a new baby they hugged him and kissed him, and
then put him in the middle and danced round him on the
sand, and there was no one ever so happy as poor little
Tom.

“ Now then,” they cried all at once, “we must come
away home, we must come away home, or the tide will
leave us dry. We have mended all the broken seaweed,
and put all the rock -pools in order, and planted all the
shells again in the sand, and nobody will see where the
ugly storm swept in last week.”

And this is the reason why the rock-pools are always
so neat and clean ; because the water-babies come in shore
after every storm to sweep them out, and comb them
down, and put them all to rights again.

Only where men are wasteful and dirty, and let

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 21 1

sewers run into the sea instead of putting the stuff upon
the fields like thrifty reasonable souls ; or throw herrings’
heads and dead dog-fish, or any other refuse, into the
water ; or in any way make a mess upon the clean shore
— there the water-babies will not come, sometimes not for
hundreds of years (for they cannot abide anything smelly
or foul), but leave the sea- anemones and the crabs to
clear away everything, till the good tidy sea has covered
up all the dirt in soft mud and clean sand, where the
water-babies can plant live cockles and whelks and razor-
shells and sea-cucumbers and golden-combs, and make a
pretty live garden again, after man’s dirt is cleared away.
And that, I suppose, is the reason why there are no
water-babies at any watering-place which I have ever
seen.

And where is the home of the water-babies ? In St.
Brandan’s fairy isle.

Did you never hear of the blessed St. Brandan, how
he preached to the wild Irish on the wild, wild Kerry
coast, he and five other hermits, till they were weary
and longed to rest ? For the wild Irish would not listen
to them, or come to confession and to mass, but liked
better to brew potheen, and dance the pater o’pee, and
knock each other over the head with shillelaghs, and

2 12

THE WATER-BABIES:

shoot each other from behind turf-dykes, and steal each
other’s cattle, and burn each other’s homes ; till St.
B randan and his friends were weary of them, for they
would not learn to be peaceable Christians at all.

So St. Brandan went out to the point of Old Dun-
more, and looked over the tide-way roaring round the
Blasquets, at the end of all the world, and away into the
ocean, and sighed — “Ah that I had wings as a dove!”
And far away, before the setting sun, he saw a blue fairy
sea, and golden fairy islands, and he said, “ Those are
the islands of the blest.” Then he and his friends got
into a hooker, and sailed away and away to the westward,
and were never heard of more. But the people who would
not hear him were changed into gorillas, and gorillas they
are until this day.

And when St. Brandan and the hermits came to that
fairy isle they found it overgrown with cedars and full
of beautiful birds ; and he sat down under the cedars
and preached to all the birds in the air. And they liked
his sermons so well that they told the fishes in the sea ;
and they came, and St. Brandan preached to them ; and
the fishes told the water-babies, who live in the caves
under the isle ; and they came up by hundreds every
Sunday, and St. Brandan got quite a neat little Sunday-

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 213

school. And there he taught the water-babies for a great
many hundred years, till his eyes grew too dim to see,
and his beard grew so long that he dared not walk for
fear of treading on it, and then he might have tumbled
down. And at last he and the five hermits fell fast asleep
under the cedar-shades, and there they sleep unto this
day. But the fairies took to the water-babies, and taught
them their lessons themselves.

And some say that St. Brandan will awake and begin
to teach the babies once more : but some think that he
will sleep on, for better for worse, till the coming of the
Cocqcigrues. But, on still clear summer evenings, when
the sun sinks down into the sea, among golden cloud-
capes and cloud-islands, and locks and friths of azure sky,
the sailors fancy that they see, away to westward, St.
Brandan’s fairy isle.

But whether men can see it or not, St. Brandan’s Isle
once actually stood there ; a great land out in the ocean,
which has sunk and sunk beneath the waves. Old Plato
called it Atlantis, and told strange tales of the wise men
who lived therein, and of the wars they fought in the old
times. And from off that island came strange flowers,
which linger still about this land : — the Cornish heath,
and Cornish moneywort, and the delicate Venus’s hair,

214 THE WATER-BABIES:

and the London-pricle which covers the Kerry mountains,
and the little pink butterwort of Devon, and the great
blue butterwort of Ireland, and the Connemara heath,
and the bristle-fern of the Turk waterfall, and many a
strange plant more ; all fairy tokens left for wise men
and good children from off St. B randan’s Isle.

Now when Tom got there, he found that the isle
stood all on pillars, and that its roots were full of caves.
There were pillars of black basalt, like Staffa ; and pillars
of green and crimson serpentine, like Kynance ; and
pillars ribboned with red and white and yellow sandstone,
like Livermead ; and there were blue grottoes like Capri,
and white grottoes like Adelsberg ; all curtained and
draped with seaweeds, purple and crimson, green and
brown ; and strewn with soft white sand, on which the
water-babies sleep every night. But, to keep the place
clean and sweet, the crabs picked up all the scraps off
the floor and ate them like so many monkeys ; while the
rocks wrere covered with ten thousand sea-anemones, and
corals and madrepores, who scavenged the water all day
long, and kept it nice and pure. But, to make up to them
for having to do such nasty work, they were not left black
and dirty, as poor chimney-sweeps and dustmen are.
No ; the fairies are more considerate and just than that,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

2I5

and have dressed them all in the most beautiful colours
and patterns, till they look like vast flower-beds of gay
blossoms. If you think I am talking nonsense, I can
only say that it is true ; and that an old gentleman named
Fourier used to say that we ought to do the same by
chimney-sweeps and dustmen, and honour them instead
of despising them ; and he was a very clever old gentle¬
man : but, unfortunately for him and the world, as mad
as a March hare.

And, instead of watchmen and policemen to keep out
nasty things at night, there were thousands and thousands
of water-snakes, and most wonderful creatures they were.
They were all named after the Nereids, the sea-fairies
who took care of them, Eunice and Polynoe, Phyllodoce
and Psamathe, and all the rest of the pretty darlings who
swim round their Queen Amphitrite, and her car of cameo
shell. They were dressed in green velvet, and black
velvet, and purple velvet ; and were all jointed in rings ;
and some of them had three hundred brains apiece, so
that they must have been uncommonly shrewd detectives ;
and some had eyes in their tails ; and some had eyes in
every joint, so that they kept a very sharp look-out ; and
when they wanted a baby-snake, they just grew one at
the end of their own tails, and when it was able to take

THE WATER-BABIES :

216

care of itself it dropped off ; so that they brought up their
families very cheaply. But if any nasty thing came by,
out they rushed upon it ; and then out of each of their
hundreds of feet there sprang a whole cutler’s shop of

Scythes ,

Javelins ,

Billhooks ,

Lances ,

Pickaxes ,

Halberts ,

Forks,

Gisarines ,

Penknives ,

Poleaxes ,

Rapiers ,

Fishhooks ,

Sabres ,

Bradawls,

Yataghans ,

Gimblets ,

Creeses ,

Corkscrews ,

Ghoorka swords ,

Pins ,

Tucks ,

Needles ,

And so forth ,

which stabbed, shot, poked, pricked, scratched, ripped,
pinked, and crimped those naughty beasts so terribly
that they had to run for their lives, or else be chopped
into small pieces and be eaten afterwards. And, if that
is not all, every word, true, then there is no faith in
microscopes, and all is over with the Linnsean Society.

And there were the water-babies in thousands, more

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

217

than Tom, or you either, could count. — All the little
children whom the good fairies take to, because their
cruel mothers and fathers will not ; all who are untaught
and brought up heathens, and all who come to grief by
ill-usage or ignorance or neglect ; all the little children
who are overlaid, or given gin when they are young, or
are let to drink out of hot kettles, or to fall into the fire ;
all the little children in alleys and courts, and tumble-
down cottages, who die by fever, and cholera, and
measles, and scarlatina, and nasty complaints which no
one has any business to have, and which no one will
have some day, when folks have common sense ; and all
the little children who have been killed by cruel masters
and wicked soldiers ; they were all there, except, of
course, the babes of Bethlehem who were killed by
wicked King Herod ; for they were taken straight to
heaven long ago, as everybody knows, and we call them
the Holy Innocents.

But I wish Tom had given up all his naughty tricks,
and left off tormenting dumb animals now that he had
plenty of playfellows to amuse him. Instead of that, I
am sorry to say, he would meddle with the creatures, all
but the water-snakes, for they would stand no nonsense.
So he tickled the madrepores, to make them shut up ;

2 1 3 THE WATER-BABIES:

and frightened the crabs, to make them hide in the sand
and peep out at him with the tips of their eyes ; and put
stones into the anemones’ mouths, to make them fancy
that their dinner was coming.

The other children warned him, and said, “ Take care
what you are at. Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid is coming.”
But Tom never heeded them, being quite riotous with
high spirits and good luck, till, one Friday morning early,
Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid came indeed.

A very tremendous lady she was ; and when the
children saw her they all stood in a row, very upright
indeed, and smoothed down their bathing dresses, and
put their hands behind them, just as if they were going
to be examined by the inspector.

And she had on a black bonnet, and a black shawl,
and no crinoline at all ; and a pair of large green spec¬
tacles, and a great hooked nose, hooked so much that
the bridge of it stood quite up above her eyebrows ; and
under her arm she carried a great birch-rod. Indeed,
she was so ugly that Tom was tempted to make faces at
her : but did not ; for he did not admire the look of the
birch-rod under her arm.

And she looked at the children one by one, and
seemed very much pleased with them, though she never

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 219

asked them one question about how they were behaving ;
and then began giving them all sorts of nice sea-things —
sea-cakes, sea-apples, sea-oranges, sea-bullseyes, sea-
toffee ; and to the very best of all she gave sea-ices, made
out of sea-cows’ cream, which never melt under water.

And, if you don’t quite believe me, then just think —
What is more cheap and plentiful than sea-rock ? Then
why should there not be sea-toffee as well ? And every
one can find sea-lemons (ready quartered too) if they
will look for them at low tide ; and sea-grapes too some¬
times, hanging in bunches; and, if you will go to Nice,
you will find the fish-market full of sea-fruit, which they
call “ frutta di mare:” though I suppose they call them
“fruits de mer” now, out of compliment to that most
successful, and therefore most immaculate, potentate who
is seemingly desirous of inheriting the blessing pro¬
nounced on those who remove their neighbours’ land¬
mark. And, perhaps, that is the very reason why the
place is called Nice, because there are so many nice
things in the sea there : at least, if it is not, it ought
to be.

Now little Tom watched all these sweet things given
away, till his mouth watered, and his eyes grew as round
as an owl’s. For he hoped that his turn would come at

THE WATER-BABIES:

last; and so it did. For the lady called him up, and
held out her fingers with something in them, and popped
it into his mouth ; and, lo and behold, it was a nasty cold
hard pebble.

“You are a very cruel
woman,” said he, and began
to whimper.

“And you are a very
cruel boy ; who puts peb¬
bles into the sea-anemones’
mouths, to take them in, and
make them fancy that they
had caught a good dinner !

As you did to them, so I
must do to you.”

“Who told you that?”
said Tom.

“ You did yourself, this
very minute.”

Tom had never opened
his lips ; so he was very much taken aback indeed.

“ Yes ; every one tells me exactly what they have
done wrong ; and that without knowing it themselves.
So there is no use trying to hide anything from me.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 221

Now go, and be a good boy, and I will put no more
pebbles in your mouth, if you put none in other
creatures’.”

“ I did not know there was any harm in it,” said Tom.
“ Then you know now. People continually say that
to me : but I tell them, if you don’t know that fire burns,
that is no reason that it should not burn you ; and if you

don’t know that dirt breeds fever, that is no reason why

*

the fevers should not kill you. The lobster did not know
that there was any harm in getting into the lobster-pot ;
but it caught him all the same.”

“ Dear me,” thought Tom, “she knows everything!”
And so she did, indeed.

“ And so, if you do not know that things are wrong,
that is no reason why you should not be punished for
them ; though not as much, not as much, my little man ”
(and the lady looked very kindly, after all), “as if you
did know.”

“Well, you are a little hard on a poor lad,” said Tom.
“ Not at all ; I am the best friend you ever had in all
your life. But I will tell you ; I cannot help punishing
people when they do wrong. I like it no more than they
do ; I am often very, very sorry for them, poor things :
but I cannot help it. If I tried not to do it, I should do

222 THE WATER-BABIES:

it all the same. For I work by machinery, just like an
engine ; and am full of wheels and springs inside ; and am
wound up very carefully, so that I cannot help going.”

“Was it long ago since they wound you up ?” asked
Tom. For he thought, the cunning little fellow, “ She
will run down some day : or they may forget to wind her
up, as old Grimes used to forget to wind up his watch
when he came in from the public-house : and then I shall
be safe.”

“ I was wound up once and for all, so long ago that
I forget all about it.”

“ Dear me,” said Tom, “you must have been made a
long time ! ”

“ I never was made, my child ; and I shall go for ever
and ever ; for I am as old as Eternity, and yet as young
as I ime.

And there came over the lady’s face a very curious
expression — very solemn, and very sad ; and yet very,
very sweet. And she looked up and away, as if she were
gazing through the sea, and through the sky, at something
far, far off ; and as she did so, there came such a quiet,
tender, patient, hopeful smile over her face that Tom
thought for the moment that she did not look ugly at all.
And no more she did ; for she was like a great many

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

223

people who have not a pretty feature in their faces, and
yet are lovely to behold, and draw little children's hearts
to them at once ; because, though the house is plain
enough, yet from the windows a beautiful and good spirit
is looking forth.

And Tom smiled in her face, she looked so pleasant
for the moment. And the strange fairy smiled too, and
said :

“Yes. You thought me very ugly just now, did you
not ?”

Tom hung down his head, and got very red about the
ears.

“ And I am very ugly. I am the ugliest fairy in the
world ; and I shall be, till people behave themselves as
they ought to do. And then I shall grow as handsome
as my sister, who is the loveliest fairy in the world ; and
her name is Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby. So she begins
where I end, and I begin where she ends ; and those who
will not listen to her must listen to me, as you will see.
Now, all of you run away, except Tom; and he may
stay and see what I am going to do. It will be a very
good warning for him to begin with, before he goes to
school.

“Now, Tom, every Friday I come down here and

224 THE WATER-BABIES:

call up all who have ill-used little children and serve them
as they served the children.”

And at that Tom was frightened, and crept under a
stone ; which made the two crabs who lived there very
angry, and frightened their friend the butter- fish into
flapping hysterics : but he would not move for them.

And first she called up all the doctors who give little
children so much physic (they were most of them old
ones ; for the young ones have learnt better, all but a few
army surgeons, who still fancy that a baby’s inside is much
like a Scotch grenadier’s), and she set them all in a row ;
and very rueful they looked ; for they knew what was
coming.

And first she pulled all their teeth out ; and then she
bled them all round : and then she closed them with
calomel, and jalap, and salts and senna, and brimstone
and treacle ; and horrible faces they made ; and then she
gave them a great emetic of mustard and water, and no
basons ; and began all over again ; and that was the way
she spent the morning.

And then she called up a whole troop of foolish ladies,
who pinch up their children’s waists and toes ; and she
laced them all up in tight stays, so that they were choked
and sick, and their noses grew red, and their hands and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 225

feet swelled ; and then she crammed their poor feet into
the most dreadfully tight boots, and made them all dance,
which they did most clumsily indeed ; and then she asked
them how they liked it ; and when they said not at all,
she let them go : because they had only done it out of
foolish fashion, fancying it was for their children’s good,
as if wasps’ waists and pigs’ toes could be pretty, or
wholesome, or of any use to anybody.

Then she called up all the careless nurserymaids, and
stuck pins into them all over, and wheeled them about in
perambulators with tight straps across their stomachs and
their heads and arms hanging over the side, till they
were quite sick and stupid, and would have had sun¬
strokes : but, being under the water, they could only have
water-strokes ; which, I assure you, are nearly as bad,
as you will find if you try to sit under a mill-wheel. And
mind — when you hear a rumbling at the bottom of the
sea, sailors will tell you that it is a ground-swell : but now
you know better. It is the old lady wheeling the maids
about in perambulators.

And by that time she was so tired, she had to go to
luncheon.

And after luncheon she set to work again, and called
up all the cruel schoolmasters — whole regiments and

226 THE WATER-BABIES:

brigades of them ; and when she saw them, she frowned
most terribly, and set to work in earnest, as if the best
part of the day’s work was to come. More than half of
them were nasty, dirty, frowzy, grubby, smelly old monks,
who, because they dare not hit a man of their own size,
amused themselves with beating little children instead ;
as you may see in the picture of old Pope Gregory (good
man and true though he was, when he meddled with things
which he did understand), teaching children to sing their
fa-fa-mi-fa with a cat-o’-nine tails under his chair : but,
because they never had any children of their own, they
took into their heads (as some folks do still) that they
were the only people in the world who knew how to
manage children ; and they first brought into England,
in the old Anglo-Saxon times, the fashion of treating free
boys, and girls too, worse than you would treat a dog or
a horse : but Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid has caught them
all long ago ; and given them many a taste of their own
rods ; and much good may it do them.

And she boxed their ears, and thumped them over the
head with rulers, and pandied their hands with canes, and
told them that they told stories, and were this and that
bad sort of people ; and the more they were very indig¬
nant, and stood upon their honour, and declared they told

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 227

the truth, the more she declared they were not, and that
they were only telling lies ; and at last she birched them
all round soundly with her great birch-rod, and set them
each an imposition of three hundred thousand lines of
Hebrew to learn by heart before she came back next
Friday. And at that they all cried and howled so, that
their breaths came all up through the sea like bubbles out
of soda-water ; and that is one reason of the bubbles in
the sea. There are others : but that is the one which
principally concerns little boys. And by that time she
was so tired that she was glad to stop ; and, indeed, she
had done a very good day’s work.

Tom did not quite dislike the old lady : but he could
not help thinking her a little spiteful — and no wonder if
she was, poor old soul ; for, if she has to wait to grow
handsome till people do as they would be done by, she
will have to wait a very long time.

Poor old Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ! she has a great
deal of hard work before her, and had better have been
born a washerwoman, and stood over a tub all day : but,
you see, people cannot always choose their own profession.

But Tom longed to ask her one question ; and after
all, whenever she looked at him, she did not look cross
at all ; and now and then there was a funny smile in her

228 THE WATER-BABIES:

face, and she chuckled to herself in a way which gave
Tom courage, and at last he said :

“ Pray, ma’am, may I ask you a question ?”

“ Certainly, my little dear.”

“ Why don’t you bring all the bad masters here and
serve them out too ? The butties that knock about the
poor collier-boys ; and the nailers that file off their lads’
noses and hammer their fingers ; and all the master
sweeps, like my master Grimes ? I saw him fall into
the water long ago ; so I surely expected he would have
been here. I’m sure he was bad enough to me.”

Then the old lady looked so very stern that Tom
was quite frightened, and sorry that he had been so bold.
But she was not angry with him. She only answered,
“ I look after them all the week round ; and they are in
a very different place from this, because they knew that
they were doing wrong.”

She spoke very quietly ; but there was something in
her voice which made Tom tingle from head to foot, as
as if he had got into a shoal of sea-nettles.

“ But these people,” she went on, “did not know that
they were doing wrong : they were only stupid and
impatient ; and therefore I only punish them till they
become patient, and learn to use their common sense like

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 229

reasonable beings. But as for chimney-sweeps, and
collier -boys, and nailer lads, my sister has set good
people to stop all that sort of thing ; and very much
obliged to her I am ; for if she could only stop the cruel
masters from ill-using poor children, I should grow hand¬
some at least a thousand years sooner. And now do
you be a good boy, and do as you would be done by,
which they did not ; and then, when my sister, Madame
Doasyouwouldbedoneby, comes on Sunday, perhaps
she will take notice of you, and teach you how to behave.
She understands that better than I do.” And so she
went.

Tom was very glad to hear that there was no chance
of meeting Grimes again, though he was a little sorry for
him, considering that he used sometimes to give him the
leavings of the beer : but he determined to be a very
good boy all Saturday ; and he was ; for he never
frightened one crab, nor tickled any live corals, nor put
stones into the sea anemones’ mouths, to make them
fancy they had got a dinner ; and, when Sunday morning
came, sure enough, Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came
too. Whereat all the little children began dancing and
clapping their hands, and Tom danced too with all his
might.

23o THE WATER-BABIES:

And as for the pretty lady, I cannot tell you what
the colour of her hair was, or of her eyes : no more could
Tom ; for, when any one looks at her, all they can think
of is, that she has the sweetest, kindest, tenderest,
funniest, merriest face they ever saw, or want to see.
But Tom saw that she was a very tall woman, as tall as
her sister : but instead of being gnarly, and horny, and
scaly, and prickly, like her, she was the most nice, soft,
fat, smooth, pussy, cuddly, delicious creature who ever
nursed a baby ; and she understood babies thoroughly,
for she had plenty of her own, whole rows and regiments
of them, and has to this day. And all her delight was,
whenever she had a spare moment, to play with babies,
in which she showed herself a woman of sense ; for
babies are the best company, and the pleasantest play¬
fellows, in the world ; at least, so all the wise people in
the world think. And therefore when the children saw
her, they naturally all caught hold of her, and pulled her
till she sat down on a stone, and climbed into her lap,
and clung round her neck, and caught hold of her hands ;
and then they all put their thumbs into their mouths, and
began cuddling and purring like so many kittens, as they
ought to have done. While those who could get no¬
where else sat down on the sand, and cuddled her feet —

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 231

for no one, you know, wears shoes in the water, except
horrid old bathing-women, who are afraid of the water-
babies pinching their horny toes. And Tom stood
staring at them ; for he could not understand what it
was all about.

“ And who are you, you little darling ?” she said.

“Oh, that is the new baby!” they all cried, pulling
their thumbs out of their mouths; “and he never had
any mother," and they all put their thumbs back again,
for they did not wish to lose any time.

“Then I will be his mother, and he shall have the
very best place ; so get out, all of you, this moment.”

And she took up two great armfuls of babies — nine
hundred under one arm, and thirteen hundred under the
other — and threw them away, right and left, into the
water. But they minded it no more than the naughty
boys in Struwelpeter minded when St. Nicholas dipped
them in his inkstand ; and did not even take their
thumbs out of their mouths, but came paddling and
wriggling back to her like so many tadpoles, till you
could see nothing of her from head to foot for the swarm
of little babies.

But she took Tom in her arms, and laid him in the
softest place of all, and kissed him, and patted him, and

232 THE WATER-BABIES;

talked to him, tenderly and low, such things as he had
never heard before in his life ; and Tom looked up into
her eyes, and loved her, and loved, till he fell fast asleep
from pure love.

And when he woke she was telling the children a
story. And what story did she tell them ? One story
she told them, which begins every Christmas Eve, and
yet never ends at all for ever and ever ; and, as she went
on, the children took their thumbs out of their mouths
and listened quite seriously ; but not sadly at all ; for she
never told them anything sad ; and Tom listened too,
and never grew tired of listening. And he listened so
long that he fell fast asleep again, and, when he woke,
the lady was nursing him still.

“ Don’t go away,” said little Tom. “ This is so nice.
I never had any one to cuddle me before.”

“Don’t go away,” said all the children; “you have
not sung us one song.”

“Well, I have time for only one. S what shall it
be?”

“The doll you lost! The doll you lost!” cried all
the babies at once.

So the strange fairy sang : —

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

■33

I once had a sweet little doll , dears ,

The prettiest doll in the world;

Her cheeks were so red and so white , dears ,
hair was so charmingly air led.
But I lost my poor little doll , dears ,

A/ ^ I played in the heath one day ;

THE WATER-BABIES :

A nd I cried for her more than a week , dears ,
But I never could find where she lay.

#

I found my poor little doll , dears ,

As I played in the heath one day :

Folks say she is terribly changed , dears ,

For her paint is all washed away ,

A/W trodden off by the cows, dears ,

A/ nd her hair not the least bit curled :

1W, for old sakes sake she is still , dears ,

The prettiest doll in the world.

What a silly song for a fairy to sing !

And what silly water-babies to be quite delighted
at it !

Well, but you see they have not the advantage of
Aunt Agitate’ s Arguments in the sea-land down below.

“ Now,’’ said the fairy to Tom, “will you be a good
boy for my sake, and torment no more sea-beasts till 1
come back ?”

“ And you will cuddle me again ? ” said poor little Tom.

“Of course I will, you little duck. I should like to
take you with me and cuddle you all the way, only I
must not and away she went.

So Tom really tried to be a good boy, and tormented
no sea-beasts after that as long as he lived ; and he is
quite alive, I assure you, still.

Oh, how good little boys ought to be who have kind
pussy mammas to cuddle them and tell them stories ;
and how afraid they ought to be of growing naughty,
and bringing tears into their mammas’ pretty eyes !

“ Thou little child, yet glorious in the night
Of heaven-born freedom on thy Being’s height,
Why with such earnest pains dost thou provoke
The Years to bring the inevitable yoke —

Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife ?

Full soon thy soul shall have her earthly freight,
And custom lie upon thee with a weight
Heavy as frost, and deep almost as life.”

Wordsworth.

CHAPTER VI.

ERE I come to the very
saddest part of all my
story. I know some
people will only laugh at it, and
call it much ado about nothing.
But I 1 enow one man who would not ;
and he was an officer with a pair of
gray moustaches as long as your arm,
who said once in company that two of
the most heartrending sights in the
world, which moved him most to tears, which he would
do anything to prevent or remedy, were a child over
a broken toy and a child stealing sweets.

The company did not laugh at him ; his moustaches

238 THE WATER-BABIES:

were too long and too gray for that : but, after he was
gone, they called him sentimental and so forth, all but
one dear little old Quaker lady with a soul as white as
her cap, who was not, of course, generally partial to
soldiers ; and she said very quietly, like a Quaker :

“ Friends, it is borne upon my mind that that is a
truly brave man.”

Now you may fancy that Tom was quite good, when
he had everything that he could want or wish : but you
would be very much mistaken. Being quite comfortable
is a very good thing ; but it does not make people good.
Indeed, it sometimes makes them naughty, as it has made
the people in America ; and as it made the people in the
Bible, who waxed fat and kicked, like horses overfed
and underworked. And I am very sorry to say that this
happened to little Tom. For he grew so fond of the
sea- bull’s -eyes and sea- lollipops that his foolish little
head could think of nothing else : and he was always
longing for more, and wondering when the strange lady
would come again and give him some, and what she
would give him, and how much, and whether she would
give him more than the others. And he thought of
nothing but lollipops by day, and dreamt of nothing else
by night — and what happened then ?

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

239

That he began to watch the lady to see where she

o j

kept the sweet things : and began hiding, and sneaking,
and following her about, and pretending to be looking
the other way, or going after something else, till he
found out that she kept them in a beautiful mother-of-
pearl cabinet away in a deep crack of the rocks.

And he longed to go to the cabinet, and yet he was
afraid ; and then he longed again, and was less afraid ;
and at last, by continual thinking about it, he longed so
violently that he was not afraid at all. And one night,
when all the other children were asleep, and he could not
sleep for thinking of lollipops, he crept away among the
rocks, and got to the cabinet, and behold ! it was
open.

But, when he saw all the nice things inside, instead
of being delighted, he was quite frightened, and wished
he had never come there. And then he would only
touch them, and he did ; and then he would only taste
one, and he did ; and then he would only eat one, and he
did ; and then he would only eat two, and then three,
and so on ; and then he was terrified lest she should
come and catch him, and began gobbling them down so
fast that he did not taste them, or have any pleasure in
them ; and then he felt sick, and would have only one

240 THE WATER-BABIES:

more ; and then only one more again ; and so on till
he had eaten them all up.

And all the while, close behind him, stood Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid.

Some people may say. But why did she not keep her
cupboard locked ? Well, I know. — It may seem a very
strange thing, but she never does keep her cupboard
locked; every one may go and taste for themselves, and
fare accordingly. It is very odd, but so it is; and I am
quite sure that she knows best. Perhaps she wishes
people to keep their fingers out of the fire, by having
them burned.

She took off her spectacles, because she did not like
to see too much ; and in her pity she arched up her eye¬
brows into her very hair, and her eyes grew so wide that
they would have taken in all the sorrows of the world,
and filled with great big tears, as they too often do.

But all she said was :

“ Ah, you poor little dear ! you are just like all the
rest.”

But she said it to herself, and Tom neither heard nor
saw her. Now, you must not fancy that she was senti¬
mental at all. If you do, and think that she is going to
let off you, or me, or any human being when we do

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 241

wrong, because she is too tender-hearted to punish us,
then you will find yourself very much mistaken, as many
a man does every year and every day.

But what did the strange fairy do when she saw all
her lollipops eaten ?

Did she fly at Tom, catch him by the scruff of the
neck, hold him, howk him, hump him, hurry him, hit him,
poke him, pull him, pinch him, pound him, put him in the
corner, shake him, slap him, set him on a cold stone to
reconsider himself, and so forth ?

Not a bit. You may watch her at work if you know
where to find her. But you will never see her do that.
For, if she had, she knew quite well Tom would have
fought, and kicked, and bit, and said bad words, and
turned again that moment into a naughty little heathen
chimney-sweep, with his hand, like Ishmael’s of old,
against every man, and every man’s hand against
him.

Did she question him, hurry him, frighten him,
threaten him, to make him confess ? Not a bit. You
may see her, as I said, at her work often enough if you
know where to look for her : but you will never see her
do that. For, if she had, she would have tempted him to
tell lies in his fright ; and that would have been worse

R

242 THE WATER-BABIES:

for him, if possible, than even becoming a heathen
chimney-sweep again.

No. She leaves that for anxious parents and teachers
(lazy ones, some call them), who, instead of giving children
a fair trial, such as they would expect and demand for
themselves, force them by fright to confess their own
faults — which is so cruel and unfair that no judge on the
bench dare do it to the wickedest thief or murderer, for
the good British law forbids it — ay, and even punish
them to make them confess, which is so detestable a
crime that it is never committed now, save by Inquisitors,
and Kings of Naples, and a few other wretched people
of whom the world is weary. And -then they say, “We
have trained up the child in the way he should go, and
when he grew up he has departed from it. Why then
did Solomon say that he would not depart from it?” But
perhaps the way of beating, and hurrying, and frightening,
and questioning, was not the way that the child should
go ; for it is not even the way in which a colt should go
if you want to break it in and make it a quiet serviceable
horse.

Some folks may say, “Ah! but the Fairy does not
need to do that if she knows everything already.” True.
But, if she did not know, she would not surely behave

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 243

worse than a British judge and jury ; and no more
should parents and teachers either.

So she just said nothing at all about the matter, not
even when Tom came next day with the rest for sweet
things. He was horribly afraid of coming : but he was
still more afraid of staying away, lest any one should
suspect him. He was dreadfully afraid, too, lest there
should be no sweets — as was to be expected, he having
eaten them all — and lest then the fairy should inquire
who had taken them. But, behold! she pulled out just
as many as ever, which astonished Tom, and frightened
him still more.

And, when the fairy looked him full in the face, he
shook from head to foot : however, she gave him his
share like the rest, and he thought within himself that
she could not have found him out.

But, when he put the sweets into his mouth, he
hated the taste of them ; and they made him so sick
that he had to get away as fast as he could; and terribly
sick he was, and very cross and unhappy, all the week
after.

Then, when next week came, he had his share again ;
and again the fairy looked him full in the face ; but
more sadly than she had ever looked. And he

244

THE WATER-BABIES:

could not bear the sweets : but took them again in spite
of himself.

And, when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, he

wanted to be cuddled like
the rest ; but she said very
seriously :

“ I should like to cuddle
you ; but I cannot, you are so
horny and prickly.”

And Tom looked at him¬
self : and he was all over
prickles, just like a sea-egg.

Which was quite natural ;
for you must know and be¬
lieve that people’s souls make
their bodies just as a snail
makes its shell (I am not
joking, my little man ; I am
in serious, solemn earnest).
And therefore, when Tom’s soul grew all prickly with
naughty tempers, his body could not help growing
prickly too, so that nobody would cuddle him, or play
with him, or even like to look at him.

What could Tom do now but go away and hide in a

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 245

corner and cry ? For nobody would play with him, and
he knew full well why.

And he was so miserable all that week that when the
ugly fairy came and looked at him once more full in the
face, more seriously and sadly than ever, he could stand
it no longer, and thrust the sweetmeats away, saying,
“No, I don’t want any: I can’t bear them now,” and
then burst out crying, poor little man, and told Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid every word as it happened.

He was horribly frightened when he had done so ;
for he expected her to punish him very severely. But,
instead, she only took him up and kissed him, which was
not quite pleasant, for her chin was very bristly indeed ;
but he was so lonely -hearted, he thought that rough
kissing was better than none.

“ I will forgive you, little man,” she said. “ I always
forgive every one the moment they tell me the truth of
their own accord.”

“ Then you will take away all these nasty prickles ?”

“ That is a very different matter. You put them
there yourself, and only you can take them away.”

“But how can I do that?” asked Tom, crying
afresh.

“Well, I think it is time for you to go to school;

246 THE WATER-BABIES;

so I shall fetch you a schoolmistress, who will teach
you how to get rid of your prickles.’’ And so she went
away.

Tom was frightened at the notion of a schoolmistress ;
for he thought she would certainly come with a birch-rod
or a cane ; but he comforted himself, at last, that she
might be something like the old woman in Vendale —
which she was not in the least ; for, when the fairy
brought her, she was the most beautiful little girl that
ever was seen, with long curls floating behind her like a
golden cloud, and long robes floating all round her like a
silver one.

“There he is,” said the fairy ; “and you must teach
him to be good, whether you like or not.”

“ I know,” said the little girl ; but she did not seem
quite to like, for she put her finger in her mouth, and
looked at Tom under her brows ; and Tom put his finger
in his mouth, and looked at her under his brows, for he
was horribly ashamed of himself.

The little girl seemed hardly to know how to begin ;
and perhaps she would never have begun at all if poor
Tom had not burst out crying, and begged her to teach
him to be good and help him to cure his prickles ; and
at that she grew so tender-hearted that she began teach-

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

247

ing him as prettily as ever child was taught in the
world.

And what did the little girl teach Tom ? She taught
him, first, what you have been taught ever since you said

your first prayers at your mothers knees ; but she taught
him much more simply. For the lessons in that world,
my child, have no such hard words in them as the lessons
in this, and therefore the water-babies like them better
than you like your lessons, and long to learn them more

24S THE WATER-BABIES :

and more ; and grown men cannot puzzle nor quarrel
over their meaning, as they do here on land ; for those
lessons all rise clear and pure, like the Test out of
Overton Pool, out of the everlasting ground of all life
and truth.

So she taught Tom every day in the week ; only on
Sundays she always went away home, and the kind fairy
took her place. And, before she had taught Tom many
Sundays, his prickles had vanished quite away, and his
skin was smooth and clean again.

“Dear me!” said the little girl; “why, I know you
now. You are the very same little chimney-sweep who
came into my bedroom.”

“Dear me!” cried Tom. “And I know you, too,
now. You are the very little white lady whom I saw in
bed.” And he jumped at her, and longed to hug and
kiss her ; but did not, remembering that she was a lady
born ; so he only jumped round and round her till he was
quite tired.

And then they began telling each other all their story
— how he had got into the water, and she had fallen over
the rock ; and how he had swum down to the sea, and
how she had flown out of the window ; and how this, that,
and the other, till it was all talked out : and then they

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 249

both began over again, and I can’t say which of the two
talked fastest.

And then they set to work at their lessons again, and
both liked them so well that they went on well till seven
full years were past and gone.

You may fancy that Tom was quite content and
happy all those seven years ; but the truth is, he was
not. He had always one thing on his mind, and that
was — where little Ellie went, when she went home on
Sundays.

To a very beautiful place, she said.

But what was the beautiful place like, and where
was it ?

Ah ! that is just what she could not say. And it is
strange, but true, that no one can say ; and that those
who have been oftenest in it, or even nearest to it, can
say least about it, and make people understand least what
it is like. There are a good many folks about the Other-
end -of- Nowhere (where Tom went afterwards), who
pretend to know it from north to south as well as if
they had been penny postmen there ; but, as they are
safe at the Other-end-of- Nowhere, nine hundred and
ninety- nine million miles away, what they say cannot
concern us.

250 THE WATER-BABIES:

But the dear, sweet, loving, wise, good, self-sacrificing
people, who really go there, can never tell you anything
about it, save that it is the most beautiful place in all the
world ; and, if you ask them more, they grow modest,
and hold their peace, for fear of being laughed at ; and
quite right they are.

So all that good little Ellie could say was, that it was
worth all the rest of the world put together. And of
course that only made Tom the more anxious to go
likewise.

“ Miss Ellie,” he said at last, “ I will know why I
cannot go with you when you go home on Sundays, or I
shall have no peace, and give you none either.”

“You must ask the fairies that.”

So when the fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, came
next, Tom asked her.

“ Little boys who are only fit to play with sea-beasts
cannot go there,” she said. “Those who go there must
go first where they do not like, and do what they do not
like, and help somebody they do not like.”

“ Why, did Ellie do that ?”

“ Ask her.”

And Ellie blushed, and said, “Yes, Tom ; I did not
like coming here at first ; I was so much happier at

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 251

home, where it is always Sunday. And I was afraid of
you, Tom, at first, because — because - ”

“ Because I was all over prickles ? But I am not
prickly now, am I, Miss Ellie?”

“ No,” said Ellie. “ I like you very much now ; and
I like coming here, too.”

“And perhaps,” said the fairy, “you will learn to like
going where you don’t like, and helping some one that
you don’t like, as Ellie has.”

But Tom put his finger in his mouth, and hung his
head down ; for he did not see that at all.

So when Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby came, Tom
asked her ; for he thought in his little head, She is not
so strict as her sister, and perhaps she may let me off
more easily.

Ah, Tom, Tom, silly fellow! and yet I don’t know
why I should blame you, while so many grown people
have got the very same notion in their heads.

But, when they try it, they get just the same answer
as Tom did. For, when he asked the second fairy, she
told him just what the first did, and in the very same
words.

Tom was very unhappy at that. And, when Ellie
went home on Sunday, he fretted and cried all day, and

252 THE WATER-BABIES:

did not care to listen to the fairy’s stories about good
children, though they were prettier than ever. Indeed,
the more he overheard of them, the less he liked to
listen, because they were all about children who did what
they did not like, and took trouble for other people, and
worked to feed their little brothers and sisters instead of
caring only for their play. And, when she began to tell
a story about a holy child in old times, who was martyred
by the heathen because it would not worship idols, Tom
could bear no more, and ran away and hid among the
rocks.

And, when Ellie came back, he was shy with her,
because he fancied she looked down on him, and thought
him a coward. And then he grew quite cross with her,
because she was superior to him, and did what he could
not do. And poor Ellie was quite surprised and sad ;
and at last Tom burst out crying ; but he would not tell
her what was really in his mind.

And all the while he was eaten up with curiosity to
know where Ellie went to ; so that he began not to care
for his playmates, or for the sea-palace or anything else.
But perhaps that made matters all the easier for him ; for
he grew so discontented with everything round him that
he did not care to stay, and did not care where he went.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 253

“Well,” he said, at last, “ I am so miserable here, I’ll
go ; if only you will go with me ?”

“Ah!” said Ellie, “ I wish I might ; but the worst of
it is, that the fairy says that you must go alone if you
go at all. Now don’t poke that poor crab about, Tom ”
(for he was feeling very naughty and mischievous), “or
the fairy will have to punish you.”

Tom was very nearly saying, “ I don’t care if she
does but he stopped himself in time.

“ I know what she wants me to do,” he said, whining
most dolefully. “ She wants me to go after that horrid
old Grimes. I don’t like him, that’s certain. And if I
find him, he will turn me into a chimney-sweep again, I
know. That’s what I have been afraid of all along.”

“No, he won’t — I know as much as that. Nobody
can turn water-babies into sweeps, or hurt them at all, as
long as they are good.”

“Ah,” said naughty Tom, “I see what you want;
you are persuading me all along to go, because you are
tired of me, and want to get rid of me.”

Little Ellie opened her eyes very wide at that, and
they were all brimming over with tears.

“Oh, Tom, Tom!'’ she said, very mournfully — and
then she cried, “ Oh, Tom ! where are you ?”

254 THE WATER-BABIES:

And Tom cried, “Oh, Ellie, where are you ?”

For neither of them could see each other — not the
least. Little Ellie vanished quite away, and Tom heard
her voice calling him, and growing smaller and smaller,
and fainter and fainter, till all was silent.

Who was frightened then but Tom ? He swam up
and down among the rocks, into all the halls and
chambers, faster than ever he swam before, but could
not find her. He shouted after her, but she did not
answer ; he asked all the other children, but they had
not seen her ; and at last he went up to the top of the
water and began crying and screaming for Mrs. Bedone-
byasyoudicl — which perhaps was the best thing to do —
for she came in a moment.

“Oh!” said Tom. “Oh dear, oh dear! I have
been naughty to Ellie, and I have killed her — I know I
have killed her.”

“Not quite that,” said the fairy; “but I have sent
her away home, and she will not come back again for I
do not know how long.”

And at that Tom cried so bitterly that the salt
sea was swelled with his tears, and the tide was
•3,954,620,819 of an inch higher than it had been the
day before : but perhaps that was owing to the wax-

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

255

ing of the moon. It may have been so; but it is con¬
sidered right in the new philosophy, you know, to
give spiritual causes for physical phenomena — espe¬
cially in parlour-tables ; and, of course, physical causes for
spiritual ones, like thinking,
and praying, and knowing
right from wrong. And so
they odds it till it comes
even, as folks say down in
Berkshire.

“ How cruel of you to
send Ellie away!” sobbed
Tom. “ However, I will
find her again, if I go to
the world’s end to look for
her.”

The fairy did not slap
Tom, and tell him to hold
his tongue : but she took
him on her lap very kindly,
just as her sister would have done ; and put him in mind
how it was not her fault, because she was wound up
inside, like watches, and could not help doing things
whether she liked or not. And then she told him how

256 THE WATER-BABIES:

he had been in the nursery long enough, and must go
out now and see the world, if he intended ever to be
a man ; and how he must go all alone by himself, as
every one else that ever was born has to go, and see
with his own eyes, and smell with his own nose, and
make his own bed and lie on it, and burn his own
fingers if he put them into the fire. And then she
told him how many fine things there were to be seen
in the world, and what an odd, curious, pleasant, orderly,
respectable, well-managed, and, on the whole, successful
(as, indeed, might have been expected) sort of a place it
was, if people would only be tolerably brave and honest
and good in it ; and then she told him not to be afraid
of anything he met, for nothing would harm him if he
remembered all his lessons, and did what he knew was
right. And at last she comforted poor little Tom so
much that he was quite eager to go, and wanted to set
out that minute. “Only,” he said, “if I might see Ellie
once before I went!”

“Why do you want that ?”

“ Because — because I should be so much happier if I
thought she had forgiven me.”

And in the twinkling of an eye there stood Ellie,
smiling, and looking so happy that Tom longed to kiss

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 257

her ; but was still afraid it would not be respectful,
because she was a lady born.

“ I am going, Elbe!” said Tom. “ I am going, if it
is to the world’s end. But I don’t like going at all, and
that’s the truth.''

“Pooh! pooh! pooh!’’ said the fairy. “You will
like it very well indeed, you little rogue, and you know
that at the bottom of your heart. But if you don’t, I will
make you like it. Come here, and see what happens to
people who do only what is pleasant.”

And she took out of one of her cupboards (she had
all sorts of mysterious cupboards in the cracks of the
rocks) the most wonderful waterproof book, full of such
photographs as never were seen. For she had found out
photography (and this is a fact) more than 13,598,000
years before anybody was born ; and, what is more, her
photographs did not merely represent light and shade, as
ours do, but colour also, and all colours, as you may see
if you look at a black cock’s tail, or a butterfly’s wing, or
indeed most things that are or can be, so to speak.
And therefore her photographs were very curious and
famous, and the children looked with great delight for the
opening of the book.

And on the title-page was written, “The History of

s

258 THE WATER-BABIES:

the great and famous nation of the Doasyoulikes, who
came away from the country of Hard work, because they
wanted to play on the Jews’-harp all day long.”

In the first picture they saw these Doasyoulikes living
in the land of Readymade, at the foot of the Happy-go-
lucky Mountains, where flapdoodle grows wild ; and if
you want to know what that is, you must read Peter
Simple.

They lived very much such a life as those jolly old
Greeks in Sicily, whom you may see painted on the
ancient vases, and really there seemed to be great excuses
for them, for they had no need to work.

Instead of houses, they lived in the beautiful caves
of tufa, and bathed in the warm springs three times
a day ; and, as for clothes, it was so warm there that
the gentlemen walked about in little beside a cocked
hat and a pair of straps, or some light summer tackle
of that kind ; and the ladies all gathered gossamer in
autumn (when they were not too lazy) to make their
winter dresses.

They were very fond of music, but it was too much
trouble to learn the piano or the violin ; and as for
dancing, that would have been too great an exertion. So
they sat on ant-hills all day long, and played on the

%

260

THE WATER-BABIES :

Jews’ harp ; and, if the ants bit them, why they just got
up and went to the next ant-hill, till they were bitten
there likewise.

And they sat under the flapdoodle-trees, and let the
flapdoodle drop into their mouths ; and under the vines,
and squeezed the grape- juice down their throats ; and, if
any little pigs ran about ready roasted, crying, “ Come
and eat me,” as was their fashion in that country, they
waited till the pigs ran against their mouths, and then
took a bite, and were content, just as so many oysters
would have been.

They needed no weapons, for no enemies ever came
near their land ; and no tools, for everything was ready¬
made to their hand ; and the stern old fairy Necessity
never came near them to hunt them up, and make them
use their wits, or die.

And so on, and so on, and so on, till there were never
such comfortable, easy-going, happy-go-lucky people in
the world.

“ Well, that is a jolly life,” said Tom.

“ You think so ?” said the fairy. “ Do you see that
great peaked mountain there behind,” said the fairy,
“ with smoke coming out of its top ?”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 261

“And do you see all those ashes, and slag, and
cinders lying about ?”

“ Yes.”

“ Then turn over the next five hundred years, and
you will see what happens next.”

And behold the mountain had blown up like a barrel
of gunpowder, and then boiled over like a kettle ; whereby
one-third of the Doasyoulikes were blown into the air,
and another third were smothered in ashes ; so that there
was only one-third left.

“You see,” said the fairy, “what comes of living on
a burning mountain.”

“ Oh, why did you not warn them ?” said little Ellie.

“ I did warn them all that I could. I let the smoke
come out of the mountain ; and wherever there is smoke
there is fire. And I laid the ashes and cinders all about ;
and wherever there are cinders, cinders may be again.
But they did not like to face facts, my dears, as very few
people do ; and so they invented a cock-and-bull story,
which, I am sure, I never told them, that the smoke was
the breath of a giant, whom some gods or other had
buried under the mountain ; and that the cinders were
what the dwarfs roasted the little pigs whole with ; and
other nonsense of that kind. And, when folks are in

262 THE WATER-BABIES:

that humour, I cannot teach them, save by the good old
birch-rod.”

And then she turned over the next five hundred
years : and there were the remnant of the Doasyoulikes,
doing as they liked, as before. They were too lazy to
move away from the mountain ; so they said, If it has
blown up once, that is all the more reason that it should
not blow up again. And they were few in number : but
they only said, The more the merrier, but the fewer the
better fare. However, that was not quite true ; for all
the flapdoodle-trees were killed by the volcano, and they
had eaten all the roast pigs, who, of course, could not be
expected to have little ones. So they had to live very
hard, on nuts and roots which they scratched out of the
ground with sticks. Some of them talked of sowing
corn, as their ancestors used to do, before they came into
the land of Readymade ; but they had forgotten how to
make ploughs (they had forgotten even how to make
Jews’-harps by this time), and had eaten all the seed-
corn which they brought out of the land of Hardwork
years since ; and of course it was too much trouble to
go away and find more. So they lived miserably on
roots and nuts, and all the weakly little children had
great stomachs, and then died.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 263

“Why,” said Tom, “they are growing no better than
savages.”

“ And look how ugly they are all getting,” said Ellie.

“Yes; when people live on poor vegetables instead
of roast beef and plum -pudding, their jaws grow large,
and their lips grow coarse, like the poor Paddies who eat
potatoes.”

And she turned over the next five hundred years.
And there they were all living up in trees, and making
nests to keep off the rain. And underneath the trees
lions were prowling about.

“Why,” said Ellie, “the lions seem to have eaten a
good many of them, for there are very few left now.”

“Yes,” said the fairy; “you see it was only the
strongest and most active ones who could climb the
trees, and so escape.”

“But what great, hulking, broad-shouldered chaps
they are,” said Tom ; “ they are a rough lot as ever
1 saw.

“Yes, they are getting very strong now; for the
ladies will not marry any but the very strongest and
fiercest gentlemen, who can help them up the trees out
of the lions’ way.”

And she turned over the next five hundred years.

264 THE WATER-BABIES:

And in that they were fewer still, and stronger, and
fiercer ; but their feet had changed shape very oddly, for
they laid hold of the branches with their great toes, as if
they had been thumbs, just as a Hindoo tailor uses his
toes to thread his needle.

The children were very much surprised, and asked
the fairy whether that was her doing.

“Yes, and no,” she said, smiling. “It was only
those who could use their feet as well as their hands who
could get a good living : or, indeed, get married ; so that
they got the best of everything, and starved out all the
rest ; and those who are left keep up a regular breed of
toe-thumb-men, as a breed of shorthorns, or skye-terriers,
or fancy pigeons is kept up.”

“ But there is a hairy one among them,” said Ellie.

“Ah!” said the fairy, “that will be a great man in
his time, and chief of all the tribe.”

And, when she turned over the next five hundred
years, it was true.

For this hairy chief had had hairy children, and they
hairier children still ; and every one wished to marry
hairy husbands, and have hairy children too ; for the
climate was growing so damp that none but the hairy
ones could live : all the rest coughed and sneezed, and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 265

had sore throats, and went into consumptions, before
they could grow up to be rnen and women.

Then the fairy turned over the next five hundred
years. And they were fewer still.

“ Why, there is one on the ground picking up roots,"
said Ellie, “and he cannot walk upright."

No more he could ; for in the same way that the
shape of their feet had altered, the shape of their backs
had altered also.

“Why," cried Tom, “1 declare they are all
apes.”

“ Something fearfully like it, poor foolish creatures,"
said' the fairy. “They are grown so stupid now, that
they can hardly think : for none of them have used their
wits for many hundred years. They have almost for¬
gotten, too, how to talk. For each stupid child forgot
some of the words it heard from its stupid parents, and
had not wits enough to make fresh words for itself.
Beside, they are grown so fierce and suspicious and
brutal that they keep out of each other’s way, and mope
and sulk in the dark forests, never hearing each other’s
voice, till they have forgotten almost what speech is like.
I am afraid they will all be apes very soon, and all by
doing only what they liked.”

266

THE WATER-BABIES :

And in the next live hundred years they were all

all except one tremendous old fellow with jaws like a jack,
who stood full seven feet high ; and M. Du Chaillu came

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 267

up to him, and shot him, as he stood roaring and thump¬
ing his breast. And he remembered that his ancestors
had once been men, and tried to say, “ Am I not a man
and a brother ?” but had forgotten how to use his tongue ;
and then he had tried to call for a doctor, but he had
forgotten the word for one. So all he said was “ Ubbo-
boo !” and died.

And that was the end of the great and jolly nation of
the Doasyoulikes. And, when Tom and Ellie came to
the end of the book, they looked very sad and solemn ;
and they had good reason so to do, for they really fancied
that the men were apes, and never thought, in their
simplicity, of asking whether the creatures had hippo¬
potamus majors in their brains or not ; in which case, as
you have been told already, they could not possibly have
been apes, though they were more apish than the apes
of all aperies.

“But could you not have saved them from becoming
apes ?” said little Ellie, at last.

“ At first, my dear ; if only they would have behaved
like men, and set to work to do what they did not like.
But the longer they waited, and behaved like the dumb
beasts, who only do what they like, the stupider and
clumsier they grew ; till at last they were past all cure,

268 THE WATER-BABIES:

for they had thrown their own wits away. It is such
things as this that help to make me so ugly, that I know
not when I shall grow fair."

“And where are they all now ?” asked Ellie.

“ Exactly where they ought to be, my dear."

“Yes!’ said the fairy, solemnly, half to herself, as
she closed the wonderful book. “ Folks say now that I
can make beasts into men, by circumstance, and selec¬
tion, and competition, and so forth. Well, perhaps they
are right ; and perhaps, again, they are wrong. That is
one of the seven things which I am forbidden to tell, till
the coming of the Cocqcigrues ; and, at all events, it is
no concern of theirs. Whatever their ancestors were,
men they are ; and I advise them to behave as such,
and act accordingly. But let them recollect this, that
there are two sides to every question, and a downhill as
well as an uphill road ; and, if I can turn beasts into
men, I can, by the same laws of circumstance, and selec¬
tion, and competition, turn men into beasts. You were
very near being turned into a beast once or twice, little
Tom. Indeed, if you had not made up your mind to go
on this journey, and see the world, like an Englishman,

I am not sure but that vou would have ended as an eft

*

in a pond.”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

269

“Oh, dear me!” said Tom; “sooner than that, and
be all over slime, I’ll go this minute, if it is to the
world’s end.”

‘And Nature, the old Nurse, took
The child upon her knee,

Saying, ‘ Here is a story book
Thy father hath written for thee.

“ ‘ Come wander with me,’ she said,

‘ Into regions yet untrod,

And read what is still unread
In the Manuscripts of God.’

“ And he wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old Nurse,

Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.”

Longfellow.

CHAPTER VII.

OW,” said Tom,
“ I am ready to
be off, if it’s to
the world’s end.”
“Ah!” said the fairy,
11 that is a brave, good
boy. But you must go
farther than the world’s
end, if you want to find
Mr. Grimes; for he is at
the Other - end - of - No¬
where. You must go to
Shiny Wall, and through
the white gate that never
was opened ; and then you will come to Peacepool, and
Mother Carey’s Haven, where the good whales go when
they die. And there Mother Carey will tell you the way

272 THE WATER-BABIES:

to the Other-end-of- Nowhere, and there you will find
Mr. Grimes.”

“Oh, dear!” said Tom. “But I do not know my
way to Shiny Wall, or where it is at all.”

“ Little boys must take the trouble to find out things
for themselves, or they will never grow to be men ; so
that you must ask all the beasts in the sea and the birds
in the air, and if you have been good to them, some of
them will tell you the way to Shiny Wall.”

“Well,” said Tom, “it will be a long journey, so I
had better start at once. Good-bye, Miss Ellie ; you
know I am getting a big boy, and I must go out and see
the world.”

“I know you must,” said Ellie; “but you will not
forget me, Tom. I shall wait here till you come.”

And she shook hands with him, and bade him good¬
bye. Tom longed very much again to kiss her ; but he
thought it would not be respectful, considering she was
a lady born ; so he promised not to forget her : but his
little whirl-about of a head was so full of the notion of
going out to see the world, that it forgot her in five
minutes : however, though his head forgot her, I am
glad to say his heart did not.

So he asked all the beasts in the sea, and all the

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 273

birds in the air, but none of them knew the way to
Shiny Wall. For why ? He was still too far down
south.

Then he met a ship, far larger than he had ever seen
— a gallant ocean-steamer, with a long cloud of smoke
trailing behind ; and he wondered how she went on
without sails, and swam up to her to see. A school of
dolphins were running races round and round her, going
three feet for her one, and Tom asked them the way to
Shiny Wall : but they did not know. Then he tried to
find out how she moved, and at last he saw her screw,
and was so delighted with it that he played under her
quarter all day, till he nearly had his nose knocked off
by the fans, and thought it time to move. Then he
watched the sailors upon deck, and the ladies, with their
bonnets and parasols : but none of them could see him,
because their eyes were not opened, — as, indeed, most
people’s eyes are not.

At last there came out into the quarter-gallery a very
pretty lady, in deep black widow’s weeds, and in her
arms a baby. She leaned over the quarter-gallery, and
looked back and back toward England far away ; and as
she looked she sang :

T

I.

“ Soft soft wind \ from out the sweet south sliding ,
Waft thy silver cloud-webs athwart the summer sea ;

Thin thin threads of mist on dewy fingers twining
Weave a veil of dappled gauze to shade my babe and me.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 275

II.

“ Deep deep Love , within thine own abyss abiding ,

Pour Thyself abroad, O Lord , on earth and air and sea ;

Worn weary hearts within Thy holy temple hiding ,
Shield from sorrow , sin , and shame my helpless babe
and me."

Her voice was so soft and low, and the music of the
air so sweet, that Tom could have listened to it all day.
But as she held the baby over the gallery rail, to show it
the dolphins leaping and the water gurgling in the ship’s
wake, lo ! and behold, the baby saw Tom.

He was quite sure of that ; for when their eyes met,
the baby smiled and held out his hands ; and Tom smiled
and held out his hands too ; and the baby kicked and
leaped, as if it wanted to jump overboard to him.

“What do you see, my darling ?” said the lady ; and
her eyes followed the baby’s till she too caught sight of
Tom, swimming about among the foam-beads below.

She gave a little shriek and start ; and then she said,
quite quietly, “ Babies in the sea ? Well, perhaps it is
the happiest place for them and waved her hand to
Tom, and cried, “Wait a little, darling, only a little : and
perhaps we shall go with you and be at rest.''

THE WATER-BABIES:

276

And at that an old nurse, all in black, came out and
talked to her, and drew her in. And Tom turned away
northward, sad and wondering ; and watched the great
steamer slide a wav into the dusk, and the lights on board

peep out one by one, and
die out again, and the
long bar of smoke fade
away into the evening
mist, till all was out of
sight.

And he swam north¬
ward again, day after
day, till at last he met
the King of the Herrings,
with a curry-comb grow¬
ing out of his nose, and
a sprat in his mouth for
a cigar, and asked him
the way to Shiny Wall ;
so he bolted his sprat

head foremost, and said :

“ If I were you, young gentleman, I should go to the
Allalonestone, and ask the last of the Gairfowl. She is
of a very ancient clan, very nearly as ancient as my own ;

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 277

and knows a good deal which these modern upstarts
don’t, as ladies of old houses are likely to do.”

Tom asked his way to her, and the King of the
Herrings told him very kindly, for he was a courteous
old gentleman of the old school, though he was horribly
ugly, and strangely bedizened too, like the old dandies
who lounge in the club-house windows.

But just as Tom had thanked him and set off, he
called after him : “ Hi ! I say, can you fly ?”

“ I never tried,” says Tom. “ Why ?”

“ Because, if you can, I should advise you to say
nothing to the old lady about it. There ; take a hint.
Good-bye.”

And away Tom went for seven days and seven nights
due north-west, till he came to a great codbank, the like
of which he never saw before. The great cod lay below
in tens of thousands, and gobbled shell-fish all day long ;
and the blue sharks roved above in hundreds, and gobbled
them when they came up. So they ate, and ate, and
ate each other, as they had done since the making of the
world ; for no man had come here yet to catch them,
and find out how rich old Mother Carey is.

And there he saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing
up on the Allalonestone, all alone. And a very grand

278 THE WATER-BABIES:

old lady she was, full three feet high, and bolt upright,
like some old Highland chieftainess. She had on a

o

black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

279

a very high bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of
high breeding), and a large pair of white spectacles on
it, which made her look rather odd : but it was the
ancient fashion of her house.

And instead of wings, she had two little feathery
arms, with which she fanned herself, and complained of
the dreadful heat ; and she kept on crooning an old song
to herself, which she learnt when she was a little baby-
bird, long ago —

“ Two little birds they sat on a stone ,

One swam away , and then there was one ,

With a fal-lal-la-lady .

“ The other swam after , and then there was none ,
And so the poor stone was left all alone ;

With a fal-lal-la-lady T

It was “flew” away, properly, and not “swam’
away : but, as she could not fly, she had a right to alter
it. However, it was a very fit song for her to sing,
because she was a lady herself.

Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his
bow ; and the first thing she said was —

28o THE WATER-BABIES:

“ Have you wings ? Can you fly ? ”

“ Oh clear, no, ma’am ; I should not think of such a
thing,” said cunning little Tom.

“Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you,
my dear. It is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything
without wings. They must all have wings, forsooth,
now, every new upstart sort of bird, and fly. What can
they want with flying, and raising themselves above their
proper station in life ? In the days of my ancestors no
birds ever thought of having wings, and did very well
without ; and now they all laugh at me because I keep
to the good old fashion. Why, the very marrocks and
dovekies have got wings, the vulgar creatures, and poor
little ones enough they are ; and my own cousins too, the
razor-bills, who are gentlefolk born, and ought to know
better than to ape their inferiors.”

And so she was running on, while Tom tried to get
in a word edgeways ; and at last he did, when the old
lady got out of breath, and began fanning herself again ;
and then he asked if she knew the way to Shiny Wall.

“ Shiny Wall ? Who should know better than I ?
We all came from Shiny Wall, thousands of years ago,
when it was decently cold, and the climate was fit for
gentlefolk ; but now, what with the heat, and what with

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 281

these vulgar-winged things who fly up and down and eat
everything, so that gentlepeople’s hunting is all spoilt,
and one really cannot get one’s living, or hardly venture
off the rock for fear of being flown against by some
creature that would not have dared to come within a
mile of one a thousand years ago — what was I saying ?
Why, we have quite gone down in the world, my dear,
and have nothing left but our honour. And I am the
last of my family. A friend of mine and I came and
settled on this rock when we were young, to be out of
the way of low people. Once we were a great nation,
and spread over all the Northern Isles. But men shot
us so, and knocked us on the head, and took our eggs —
why, if you will believe it, they say that on the coast of
Labrador the sailors used to lay a plank from the rock
on board the thing called their ship, and drive us along
the plank by hundreds, till we tumbled down into the
ship’s waist in heaps ; and then, I suppose, they ate us,
the nasty fellows! Well — but — what was I saying? At
last, there were none of us left, except on the old Gair-
fowlskerry, just off the Iceland coast, up which no man
could climb. Even there we had no peace ; for one day,
when I was quite a young girl, the land rocked, and the
sea boiled, and the sky grew dark, and all the air was

282 THE WATER-BABIES:

filled with smoke and dust, and down tumbled the old
Gairfowlskerry into the sea. The dovekies and marrocks,
of course, all flew away ; but we were too proud to do
that. Some of us were dashed to pieces, and some
drowned ; and those who were left got away to Eldey,
and the dovekies tell me they are all dead now, and that
another Gairfowlskerry has risen out of the sea close to
the old one, but that it is such a poor flat place that it is
not safe to live on : and so here I am left alone.”

This was the Gairfowl’s story, and, strange as it may
seem, it is every word of it true.

“ If you only had had wings !” said Tom ; “ then you
might all have flown away too.”

“Yes, young gentleman: and if people are not
gentlemen and ladies, and forget that noblesse oblige ,
they will find it as easy to get on in the world as other
people who don’t care what they do. Why, if I had not
recollected that noblesse oblige , I should not have been all
alone now.” And the poor old lady sighed.

“ How was that, ma’am ?”

“ Why, my dear, a gentleman came hither with me,
and after we had been here some time, he wanted to
marry — in fact, he actually proposed to me. Well, I
can’t blame him ; I was young, and very handsome then,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 283

I don’t deny : but you see, I could not hear of such a
thing, because he was my deceased sister’s husband,
you see ?”

“ Of course not, ma’am,” said Tom ; though, of
course, he knew nothing about it. “She was very much
diseased, I suppose ?”

“ You do not understand me, my dear. I mean, that
being a lady, and with right and honourable feelings, as
our house always has had, I felt it my duty to snub him,
and howk him, and peck him continually, to keep him at
his proper distance ; and, to tell the truth, I once pecked
him a little too hard, poor fellow, and he tumbled back¬
wards off the rock, and — really, it was very unfortunate,
but it was not my fault — a shark coming by saw him
flapping, and snapped him up. And since then I have
lived all alone —

‘ With a fal-lal-la-lady .’

And soon I shall be gone, my little dear, and nobody
will miss me ; and then the poor stone will be left all
alone.”

“ But, please, which is the way to Shiny Wall ?”
said Tom.

“ Oh, you must go, my little dear — you must go.

284 THE WATER-BABIES:

Let me see — I am sure — that is — really, my poor old
brains are getting quite puzzled. Do you know, my little
dear, I am afraid, if you want to know, you must ask
some of these vulgar birds about, for I have quite for¬
gotten.”

And the poor old Gairfowl began to cry tears of pure
oil ; and Tom was quite sorry for her ; and for himself
too, for he was at his wit’s end whom to ask.

But by there came a flock of petrels, who are Mother
Carey’s own chickens ; and Tom thought them much
prettier than Lady Gairfowl, and so perhaps they were ;
for Mother Carey had had a great deal of fresh experi¬
ence between the time that she invented the Gairfowl
and the time that she invented them. They flitted along
like a flock of black swallows, and hopped and skipped
from wave to wave, lifting up their little feet behind
them so daintily, and whistling to each other so tenderly,
that Tom fell in love with them at once, and called them
to know the way to Shiny Wall.

“Shiny Wall? Do you want Shiny Wall? Then
come with us, and we will show you. We are Mother
Carey’s own chickens, and she sends us out over all the
seas, to show the good birds the way home.”

Tom was delighted, and swam off to them, after he

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 285

had made his bow to the Gairfowl. But she would not
return his bow : but held herself bolt upright, and wept
tears of oil as she sang :

“ And so the poor stone zuas left all alone ;

With a fal-lal- la-lady

But she was wrong there ; for the stone was not left
all alone : and the next time that Tom goes by it, he
will see a sight worth seeing.

The old Gairfowl is gone already : but there are
better things come in her place ; and when Tom comes
he will see the fishing-smacks anchored there in hundreds,
from Scotland, and from Ireland, and from the Orkneys,
and the Shetlands, and from all the Northern ports, full
of the children of the old Norse Vikings, the masters of
the sea. And the men will be hauling in the great cod
by thousands, till their hands are sore from the lines ;
and they will be making cod-liver oil and guano, and
salting down the fish ; and there will be a man-of-war
steamer there to protect them, and a lighthouse to show
them the way ; and you and I, perhaps, shall go some
day to the Allalonestone to the great summer sea-fair,
and dredge strange creatures such as man never saw
before ; and we shall hear the sailors boast that it is not

286

THE WATER-BABIES :

the worst jewel in Queen Victoria’s crown, for there are
eighty miles of codbank, and food for all the poor folk
in the land. That is what Tom will see, and perhaps
you and I shall see it too. And then we shall not be
sorry because we cannot get a Gairfowl to stuff, much
less find gairfowl enough to drive them into stone pens
and slaughter them, as the old Norsemen did, or drive
them on board along a plank till the ship was victualled
with them, as the old English and French rovers used
to do, of whom dear old Hakluyt tells : but we shall
remember what Mr. Tennyson says : how

“ The old order' changeth , giving place to the new ,

And God fulfils himself in many way si'

And now Tom was all agog to start for Shiny Wall ;
but the petrels said no. They must go first to Allfowls-
ness, and wait there for the great gathering of all the
sea-birds, before they start for their summer breeding-
places far away in the Northern Isles; and there they
would be sure to find some birds which were going to
Shiny Wall : but where Allfowlsness was, he must
promise never to tell, lest men should go there and
shoot the birds, and stuff them, and put them into stupid
museums, instead of leaving them to play and breed and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

287

work in Mother Carey’s water-garden, where they ought
to be.

So where Allfowlsness is nobody must know ; and
all that is to be said about it is, that Tom waited there
many days ; and as he waited, he saw a very curious
sight. On the rabbit burrows on the shore there
gathered hundreds and hundreds of hoodie-crows, such as
you see in Cambridgeshire. And they made such a
noise, that Tom came on shore and went up to see what
was the matter.

And there he found them holding their great caucus,
which they hold every year in the North ; and all their
stump-orators were speechifying ; and for a tribune, the
speaker stood on an old sheep’s skull.

And they cawed and cawed, and boasted of all the
clever things they had done ; how many lambs’ eyes
they had picked out, and how many dead bullocks they
had eaten, and how many young grouse they had
swallowed whole, and how many grouse-eggs they had
flown away with, stuck on the point of their bills, which
is the hoodie-crow’s particularly clever feat, of which he
is as proud as a gipsy is of doing the hokany-baro ; and
what that is, I won’t tell you.

And at last they brought out the prettiest, neatest

288 THE WATER-BABIES :

young lady-crow that ever was seen, and set her in the

middle, and all began abusing and vilifying, and rating,
and bullyragging at her, because she had stolen no

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 289

grouse -eggs, and had actually dared to say that she
would not steal any. So she was to be tried publicly by
their laws (for the hoodies always try some offenders in
their great yearly parliament). And there she stood in
the middle, in her black gown and gray hood, looking as
meek and as neat as a Quakeress, and they all bawled at
her at once —

And it was in vain that she pleaded —

That she did not like grouse-eggs ;

That she could get her living very well without them ;

That she was a fraid to eat them , for fear of the game-
keepers ;

That she had not the heart to eat them , because the
grouse were such pretty , kind ’ jolly birds ;

And a dozen reasons more.

For all the other scaul- crows set upon her, and
pecked her to death there and then, before Tom could
come to help her ; and then flew away, very proud of
what they had done.

Now, was not this a scandalous transaction ?

But they are true republicans, these hoodies, who do
every one just what he likes, and make other people do
so too ; so that, for any freedom of speech, thought,

u

290

THE WATER-BABIES :

or action, which is allowed among them, they might
as well be American citizens of the new school.

But the fairies took the good crow, and gave her
nine new sets of feathers running, and turned her at last
into the most beautiful bird of paradise with a green
velvet suit and a long tail, and sent her to eat fruit in
the Spice Islands, where cloves and nutmegs grow.

And Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid settled her account
with the wicked hoodies. For, as they flew away, what
should they find but a nasty dead dog ? — on which they
all set to work, pecking and gobbling and cawing and
quarrelling to their hearts’ content. But the moment
afterwards, they all threw up their bills into the air, and
gave one screech ; and then turned head over heels
backward, and fell down dead, one hundred and twenty-
three of them at once. For why ? The fairy had told
the gamekeeper in a dream, to fill the dead dog full of
strychnine ; and so he did.

And after a while the birds began to gather at
Allfowlsness, in thousands and tens of thousands, black¬
ening all the air ; swans and brant geese, harlequins and
eiders, harolds and garganeys, smews and goosanders,
divers and loons, grebes and dovekies, auks and razor¬
bills, gannets and petrels, skuas and terns, with gulls

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 291

beyond all naming or numbering ; and they paddled and
washed and splashed and combed and brushed themselves
on the sand, till the shore was white with feathers ; and
they quacked and clucked and gabbled and chattered
and screamed and whooped as they talked over matters
with their friends, and settled where they were to go and
breed that summer, till you might have heard them ten
miles off ; and lucky it was for them that there was no
one to hear them but the old keeper, who lived all
alone upon the Ness, in a turf hut thatched with heather
and fringed round with great stones slung across the roof
by bent-ropes, lest the winter gales should blow the hut
right away. But he never minded the birds nor hurt
them, because they were not in season ; indeed, he
minded but two things in the whole world, and those
were, his Bible and his grouse ; for he was as good an
old Scotchman as ever knit stockings on a winter’s
night : only, when all the birds were going, he toddled
out, and took off his cap to them, and wished them a
merry journey and a safe return ; and then gathered up
all the feathers which they had left, and cleaned them to
sell down south, and make feather-beds for stuffy people
to lie on.

Then the petrels asked this bird and that whether

292 THE WATER-BABIES:

they would take Tom to Shiny Wall : but one set was
going to Sutherland, and one to the Shetlands, and one
to Norway, and one to Spitzbergen, and one to Iceland,

and one to Greenland : but none would go to Shiny
Wall. So the good-natured petrels said that they would
show him part of the way themselves, but they were

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 293

only going as far as Jan Mayen’s land ; and after that he
must shift for himself.

And then all the birds rose up, and streamed away in
long black lines, north, and north-east, and north-west,
across the bright blue summer sky ; and their cry was
like ten thousand packs of hounds, and ten thousand
peals of bells. Only the puffins stayed behind, and killed
the young rabbits, and laid their eggs in the rabbit-
burrows ; which was rough practice, certainly ; but a
man must see to his own family.

And, as Tom and the petrels went north-eastward, it
began to blow right hard ; for the old gentleman in the
gray great-coat, who looks after the big copper boiler, in
the gulf of Mexico, had got behindhand with his work ;
so Mother Carey had sent an electric message to him for
more steam ; and now the steam was coming, as much in
an hour as ought to have come in a week, puffing and
roaring and swishing and swirling, till you could not see
where the sky ended and the sea began. But Tom and
the petrels never cared, for the gale was right abaft, and
away they went over the crests of the billows, as merry
as so many flying-fish.

And at last they saw an ugly sight — the black side of
a great ship, water-logged in the trough of the sea. Her

294

THE WATER-BABIES:

funnel and her masts were overboard, and swayed and
surged under her lee ; her decks were swept as clean as
a barn floor, and there was no living soul on board.

The petrels flew up to her, and wailed round her ;
for they were very sorry indeed, and also they expected
to find some salt pork ; and Tom scrambled on board ol
her and looked round, frightened and sad.

And there, in a little cot, lashed tight under the
bulwark, lay a baby fast asleep ; the very same baby,
Tom saw at once, which he had seen in the singing
lady’s arms.

He went up to it, and wanted to wake it ; but behold,
from under the cot out jumped a little black and tan
terrier dog, and began barking and snapping at Tom,
and would not let him touch the cot.

Tom knew the do^’s teeth could not hurt him : but
at least it could shove him away, and did ; and he and
the dog fought and struggled, for he wanted to help the
baby, and did not want to throw the poor dog overboard :
but as they were struggling, there came a tall green sea,
and walked in over the weather side of the ship, and
swept them all into the waves.

“Oh, the baby, the baby!” screamed Tom: but the
next moment he did not scream at all ; for he saw the

295

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

cot settling clown through the green water, with the baby
smiling in it, fast asleep ; and he saw the fairies come up
from below, and carry baby and cradle gently down in
their soft arms ; and then he knew it was all right, and
that there would be a
new water- baby in St.

Brandan’s Isle.

And the poor little
dog ?

Why, after he had
kicked and coughed a
little, he sneezed so hard,
that he sneezed himself
clean out of his skin, and
turned into a water-dog,
and jumped and danced
round Tom, and ran over
the crests of the waves,
and snapped at the jelly¬
fish and the mackerel, and followed Tom the whole way
to the Other-end-of- Nowhere.

Then they went on again, till they began to see the
peak of Jan Mayen’s Land, standing up like a white
sugar-loaf, two miles above the clouds.

296 THE WATER-BABIES:

And there they fell in with a whole flock of molly-
mocks, who were feeding on a dead whale.

“ These are the fellows to show you the way,” said
Mother Carey’s chickens ; “ we cannot help you farther
north. We don’t like to get among the ice pack, for
fear it should nip our toes : but the mollys dare fly any¬
where.”

So the petrels called to the mollys : but they were so
busy and greedy, gobbling and pecking and spluttering
and fighting over the blubber, that they did not take the
least notice.

“Come, come,” said the petrels, “you lazy greedy
lubbers, this young gentleman is going to Mother Carey,
and if you don’t attend on him, you won’t earn your
discharge from her, you know.”

“Greedy we are,” says a great fat old molly, “but
lazy we ain’t ; and, as for lubbers, we’re no more lubbers
than you. Let’s have a look at the lad.”

And he flapped right into Tom’s face, and stared
at him in the most impudent way (for the mollys are
audacious fellows, as all whalers know), and then asked
him where he hailed from, and what land he sighted last.

And, when Tom told him, he seemed pleased, and
said he was a good plucked one to have got so far.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 297

“Come along, lads,” he said to the rest, “and give
this little chap a cast over the pack, for Mother Carey’s
sake. We’ve eaten blubber enough for to-day, and we’ll
e’en work out a bit of our time by helping the lad.”

So the mollys took Tom up on their backs, and flew

off with him, laughing and joking — and oh, how they did
smell of train oil !

“Who are you, you jolly birds ?” asked Tom.

“We are the spirits of the old Greenland skippers (as
every sailor knows), who hunted here, right whales and

298

THE WATER-BABIES :

horse-whales, full hundreds of years agone. But, because
we were saucy and greedy, we were all turned into
mollys, to eat whale’s blubber all our days. But lubbers
we are none, and could sail a ship now against any man
in the North seas, though we don’t hold with this new¬
fangled steam. And it’s a shame of those black imps of
petrels to call us so ; but because they’re her grace's
pets, they think they may say anything they like.”

“And who are you ?” asked Tom of him, for he saw
that he was the king of all the birds.

“ My name is Hendrick Hudson, and a right good
skipper was I ; and my name will last to the world’s end,
in spite of all the wrong I did. For I discovered
Hudson River, and I named Hudson’s Bay ; and many
have come in my wake that dared not have shown me
the way. But I was a hard man in my time, that’s truth,
and stole the poor Indians off the coast of Maine, and
sold them for slaves down in Virginia ; and at last I was
so cruel to my sailors, here in these very seas, that they
set me adrift in an open boat, and I never was heard of
more. So now I’m the king of all mollys, till I’ve
worked out my time.”

And now they came to the edge of the pack, and
beyond it they could see Shiny Wall looming, through

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

299

mist, and snow, and storm. But the pack rolled horribly
upon the swell, and the ice giants fought and roared, and
leapt upon each other’s backs, and ground each other to
powder, so that Tom was afraid to venture among them,
lest he should be ground to powder too. And he was the
more afraid, when he saw lying among the ice pack the
wrecks of many a gallant ship; some with masts and yards
all standing, some with the seamen frozen fast on board.
Alas, alas, for them ! They were all true English hearts ;
and they came to their end like good knights -errant,
in searching for the white gate that never was opened
yet.

But the good mollys took Tom and his dog up, and
flew with them safe over the pack and the roaring ice
giants, and set them down at the foot of Shiny Wall.

“And where is the gate ?” asked Tom.

“There is no gate,” said the mollys.

“No gate ?” cried Tom, aghast.

“None; never a crack of one, and that’s the whole
of the secret, as better fellows, lad, than you have found
to their cost ; and if there had been, they’d have killed
by now every right whale that swims the sea.”

“What am I to do, then ?”

“ Dive under the floe, to be sure, if you have pluck.”

3°°

THE WATER-BABIES;

“ I’ve not come so far to turn now,” said Tom ; “so
here goes for a header.”

“A lucky voyage to you, lad,” said the mollys ; “we
knew you were one of the right sort. So good-bye.”

“Why don’t you come too ?” asked Tom.

But the mollys only wailed sadly, “We can’t go yet,
we can’t go yet,” and flew away over the pack.

So Tom dived under the great white gate which
never was opened yet, and went on in black darkness, at
the bottom of the sea, for seven days and seven nights.
And yet he was not a bit frightened. Why should he
be ? He was a brave English lad, whose business is to
go out and see all the world.

And at last he saw the light, and clear clear water
overhead ; and up he came a thousand fathoms, among
clouds of sea -moths, which fluttered round his head.
There were moths with pink heads and wings and opal
bodies, that flapped about slowly ; moths with brown
wings that flapped about quickly ; yellow shrimps that
hopped and skipped most quickly of all ; and jellies of all
the colours in the world, that neither hopped nor skipped,
but only dawdled and yawned, and would not get out of
his way. The dog snapped at them till his jaws were
tired; but Tom hardly minded them at all, he was so

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 301

eager to get to the top of the water, and see the pool
where the good whales go.

And a very large pool it was, miles and miles across,
though the air was so clear that the ice cliffs on the
opposite side looked as if they were close at hand. All
round it the ice cliffs rose, in walls and spires and battle¬
ments, and caves and bridges, and stories and galleries,
in which the ice-fairies live, and drive away the storms
and clouds, that Mother Carey's pool may lie calm from
years end to year’s end. And the sun acted policeman,
and walked round outside every day, peeping just over
the top of the ice wall, to see that all went right ; and
now and then he played conjuring tricks, or had an
exhibition of fireworks, to amuse the ice-fairies. For he
would make himself into four or five suns at once, or
paint the sky with rings and crosses and crescents of
white fire, and stick himself in the middle of them, and
wink at the fairies ; and I daresay they were very much
amused ; for anything’s fun in the country.

And there the good whales lay, the happy sleepy
beasts, upon the still oily sea. They were all right
whales, you must know, and finners, and razor-backs,
and bottle -noses, and spotted sea -unicorns with long
ivory horns. But the sperm whales are such raging,

302 THE WATER-BABIES:

ramping, roaring, rumbustious fellows, that, if Mother
Carey let them in, there would be no more peace in
Peacepool. So she packs them away in a great pond by
themselves at the South Pole, two hundred and sixty-three
miles south-south-east of Mount Erebus, the great volcano
in the ice ; and there they butt each other with their ugly
noses, day and night from year’s end to year’s end.

But here there were only good quiet beasts, lying
about like the black hulls of sloops, and blowing every
now and then jets of white steam, or sculling round with
their huge mouths open, for the sea-moths to swim down
their throats. There were no threshers there to thresh
their poor old backs, or sword-fish to stab their stomachs,
or saw-fish to rip them up, or ice-sharks to bite lumps
out of their sides, or whalers to harpoon and lance them.
They were quite safe and happy there ; and all they had
to do was to wait quietly in Peacepool, till Mother Carey
sent for them to make them out of old beasts into new.

Tom swam up to the nearest whale, and asked the
way to Mother Carey.

“ There she sits in the middle,” said the whale.

Tom looked ; but he could see nothing in the middle
of the pool, but one peaked iceberg : and he said so.

“That’s Mother Carey,” said the whale, “as you will

3o4 THE WATER-BABIES:

find when you get to her. There she sits making old
beasts into new all the year round.”

“ How does she do that ?”

“That’s her concern, not mine,” said the old whale ;
and yawned so wide (for he was very large) that there
swam into his mouth 943 sea-moths, 13,846 jelly-fish no
bigger than pins’ heads, a string of salpse nine yards
long, and forty-three little ice-crabs, who gave each other
a parting pinch all round, tucked their legs under their
stomachs, and determined to die decently, like Julius
Caesar.

“ I suppose,” said Tom, “she cuts up a great whale
like you into a whole shoal of porpoises ?”

At which the old whale laughed so violently that he
coughed up all the creatures ; who swam away again
very thankful at having escaped out of that terrible
whalebone net of his, from which bourne no traveller
returns ; and Tom went on to the iceberg, wondering.

And, when he came near it, it took the form of the
grandest old lady he had ever seen — a white marble
lady, sitting on a white marble throne. And from the
foot of the throne there swum away, out and out into the
sea, millions of new-born creatures, of more shapes and
colours than man ever dreamed. And they were Mother

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

305

Carey’s children, whom she makes out of the sea-water
all day long.

He expected, of course — like some grown people who

ought to know better — to find her snipping, piecing, fit¬
ting, stitching, cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammer¬
ing, turning, polishing, moulding, measuring, chiselling,

x

3°6

THE WATER-BABIES :

clipping, and so forth, as men do when they go to work
to make anything.

But, instead of that, she sat quite still with her chin
upon her hand, looking down into the sea with two great
grand blue eyes, as blue as the sea itself. Her hair was
as white as the snow — for she was very very old — in
fact, as old as anything which you are likely to come
across, except the difference between right and wrong.

And, when she saw Tom, she looked at him very
kindly.

“ W hat do you want, my little man ? It is long since
1 have seen a water-baby here.”

Tom told her his errand, and asked the way to the
Other-end-of- Nowhere.

“ You ought to know yourself, for you have been
there already.”

“ Have I, ma’am ? I’m sure I forget all about it.”

“ Then look at me.”

And, as Tom looked into her great blue eyes, he
recollected the way perfectly.

Now, was not that strange ?

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Tom. “Then I won’t
trouble your ladyship any more ; I hear you are very
busy.”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

307

“ I am never more busy than I am now,” she said,
without stirring a finger.

“ I heard, ma’am, that you were always making new
beasts out of old.'’

“So people fancy. But 1 am not going to trouble
myself to make things, my little dear. I sit here and
make them make themselves.”

“ You are a clever fairy, indeed,” thought Tom. And
he was quite right.

That is a grand trick of good old Mother Carey’s,
and a grand answer, which she has had occasion to make
several times to impertinent people. .

There was once, for instance, a fairy who was so
clever that she found out how to make butterflies. 1
don’t mean sham ones ; no : but real live ones, which
would fly, and eat, and lay eggs, and do everything that
they ought ; and she was so proud of her skill that she
went flying straight off to the North Pole, to boast to
Mother Carey how she could make butterflies.

But Mother Carey laughed.

“ Know, silly child,” she said, “ that any one can
make things, if they will take time and trouble enough :
but it is not every one who, like me, can make things
make themselves.”

3oS THE WATER-BABIES :

But people do not yet believe that Mother Carey is
as clever as all that comes to ; and they will not till
they, too, go the journey to the Other-end-of-Nowhere.

“And now, my pretty little man,” said Mother Carey,
“you are sure you know the way to the Other-end-of-
Nowhere ? ”

Tom thought ; and behold, he had forgotten it utterly.

“That is because you took your eyes off me.”

Tom looked at her again, and recollected ; and then
looked away, and forgot in an instant.

“ But what am I to do, ma’am ? For I can’t keep
looking at you when I am somewhere else.”

“You must do without me, as most people have to
do, for nine hundred and ninety - nine thousandths of
their lives ; and look at the dog instead ; for he knows
the way well enough, and will not forget it. Besides,
you may meet some very queer-tempered people there,
who will not let you pass without this passport of mine,
which you must hang round your neck and take care of ;
and, of course, as the dog will always go behind you,
you must go the whole way backward.”

“ Backward ! ” cried Tom. “ Then I shall not be
able to see my way.”

“On the contrary, if you look forward, you will not

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

309

see a step before you, and be certain to go wrong ; but,
if you look behind you, and watch carefully whatever
you have passed, and especially keep your eye on the
dog, who goes by instinct, and therefore can’t go wrong,
then you will know what is coming next, as plainly as if
you saw it in a looking-glass.”

Tom was very much astonished : but he obeyed her,
for he had learnt always to believe what the fairies told
him.

“So it is, my dear child,” said Mother Carey; “and
I will tell you a story, which will show you that I am
perfectly right, as it is my custom to be.

“ Once on a time, there were two brothers. One
was called Prometheus, because he always looked before
him, and boasted that he was wise beforehand. The
other was called Epimetheus, because he always looked
behind him, and did not boast at all ; but said humbly,
like the Irishman, that he had sooner prophesy after the
event.

“ Well, Prometheus was a very clever fellow, of
course, and invented all sorts of wonderful things. But,
unfortunately, when they were set to work, to work was
just what they would not do : wherefore very little has
come of them, and very little is left of them ; and now

3io THE WATER-BABIES:

nobody knows what they were, save a few archaeological
old gentlemen who scratch in queer corners, and find
little there save Ptinum Furem, Blaptem Mortisagam,
Acarum Horridum, and Tineam Laciniarum.

“ But Epimetheus was a very slow fellow, certainly,
and went among men for a clod, and a muff, and a milk¬
sop, and a slowcoach, and a bloke, and a boodle, and so
forth. And very little he did, for many years : but what
he did, he never had to do over again.

“ And what happened at last ? There came to the
two brothers the most beautiful creature that ever was
seen, Pandora by name ; which means, All the gifts of
the Gods. But because she had a strange box in her
hand, this fanciful, forecasting, suspicious, prudential,
theoretical, deductive, prophesying Prometheus, who was
always settling what was going to happen, would have
nothing to do with pretty Pandora and her box.

“ But Epimetheus took her and it, as he took every¬
thing that came ; and married her for better for worse,
as every man ought, whenever he has even the chance
of a good wife. And they opened the box between
them, of course, to see what was inside : for, else, of
what possible use could it have been to them ?

“And out flew all the ills which flesh is heir to; all

A FAIRY TALE FOR A

LAND-BABY. 31 1

the children of the four great bogies, Self-will, Ignorance,
I7ear, and Dirt — for instance :

Measles,

Famines ,

Monks,

Quacks,

Scarlatina,

Unpaid bills,

Idols,

Tight stays,

Hooping-coughs,

Potatoes ,

Popes,

Bad Wine,

Wars,

Despots,

Peacemongers,

Demagogues,

And, worst of ally Naughty Boys and Girls.

But one thing remained at the bottom of the box, and
that was, Hope.

“ So Epimetheus got a great deal of trouble, as most
men do in this world : but he got the three best things
in the world into the bargain — a good wife, and experi¬
ence, and hope : while Prometheus had just as much
trouble, and a great deal more (as you will hear), of his
own making ; with nothing beside, save fancies spun out
of his own brain, as a spider spins her web out of her
stomach.

“And Prometheus kept on looking before him so far

3 1 2 THE WATER-BABIES :

ahead, that as he was running about with a box of
lucifers (which were the only useful things he ever
invented, and do as much harm as good), he trod on his
own nose, and tumbled down (as most deductive
philosophers do), whereby he set the Thames on fire ;
and they have hardly put it out again yet. So he had to
be chained to the top of a mountain, with a vulture by
him to give him a peck whenever he stirred, lest he
should turn the whole world upside down with his
prophecies and his theories.

“ But stupid old Epimetheus went working and
grubbing on, with the help of his wife Pandora, always
looking behind him to see what had happened, till he
really learnt to know now and then what would happen
next ; and understood so well which side his bread was
buttered, and which way the cat jumped, that he began
to make things which would work, and go on working,
too ; to till and drain the ground, and to make looms, and
ships, and railroads, and steam ploughs, and electric
telegraphs, and all the things wdiich you see in the Great
Exhibition ; and to foretell famine, and bad weather, and
the price of stocks and (what is hardest of all) the next
vagary of the great idol Whirligig, which some call
Public Opinion ; till at last he grew as rich as a Jew, and

\ FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY

**»

as fat as a farmer, and people thought twice before they
meddled with him, but only once before they asked him

to help them ; for, because he earned his money well, he
could afford to spend it well likewise.

“And his children are the men of science, who get
good lasting work done in the world ; but the children

314 THE WATER-BABIES:

of Prometheus are the fanatics, and the theorists, and the
bigots, and the bores, and the noisy windy people, who
go telling silly folk what will happen, instead of looking
to see what has happened already.”

Now, was not Mother Carey’s a wonderful story ?
And, I am happy to say, Tom believed it every word.

For so it happened to Tom likewise. He was very
sorely tried ; for though, by keeping the dog to heels (or
rather to toes, for he had to walk backward), he could
see pretty well which way the dog was hunting, yet it
was much slower work to go backwards than to go
forwards. But, what was more trying still, no sooner
had he got out of Peacepool, than there came running
to him all the conjurors, fortune-tellers, astrologers,
prophesiers, projectors, prestigiators, as many as were in
those parts (and there are too many of them everywhere),
Old Mother Shipton on her broomstick, with Merlin,
Thomas the Rhymer, Gerbertus, Rabanus Maurus,
** Nostradamus, Zadkiel, Raphael, Moore, Old Nixon, and
a good many in black coats and white ties who might
have known better, considering in what century they were
born, all bawling and screaming at him, “ Look a-head,
only look a-head ; and we will show you what man never
saw before, and right away to the end of the world !”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

3i5

But I am proud to say that, though Tom had not
been to Cambridge — for, if he had, he would have cer¬
tainly been senior wrangler — he was such a little dogged,
hard, gnarly, foursquare brick of an English boy, that
he never turned his head round once all the way from
Peacepool to the Other-end-of- Nowhere : but kept his
eye on the dog, and let him pick out the scent, hot or
cold, straight or crooked, wet or dry, up hill or down
dale ; by which means he never made a single mistake,
and saw all the wonderful and hitherto by -no -mortal-
man-imagined things, which it is my duty to relate to
you in the next chapter.

“ Come to me, 0 ye children !

For I hear you at your play ;

And the questions that perplexed me
Have vanished quite away.

“ Ye open the Eastern windows,

That look towards the sun,

Where thoughts are singing swallows,
And the brooks of morning run.

tfr

“For what are all our contrivings
And the wisdom of our books,

When compared with your caresses,

And the gladness of your looks ?

“ Ye are better than all the ballads
That ever were sung or said ;

For ye are living poems,

And all the rest are dead.” — Longfellow.

CHAPTER VIII. and LAST.-

ERE begins the never-
to- be- too-much-studied
account of the nine-
hundred - and - ninety -
ninth part of the wonderful
things which Tom saw on
his journey to the Other-end-
of-Nowhere ; which all good
little children are requested
to read ; that, if ever they
get to the Other - end - of-
Nowhere, as they may very
probably do, they may not
burst out laughing, or try to
run away, or do any other
silly vulgar thing which may offend Mrs. Bedonebyas-
voudid.

3 1 8 THE WATER-BABIES :

Now, as soon as Tom had left Peacepool, he came
to the white lap of the great sea -mother, ten thousand
fathoms deep ; where she makes world-pap all day long,
for the steam-giants to knead, and the fire-giants to bake,
till it has risen and hardened into mountain-loaves and
island-cakes.

And there Tom was very near being kneaded up in
the world-pap, and turned into a fossil water - baby ;
which would have astonished the Geological Society of
New Zealand some hundreds of thousands of years
hence.

For, as he walked along in the silence of the sea-
twilight, on the soft white ocean floor, he was aware of a
hissing, and a roaring, and a thumping, and a pumping,
as of all the steam-engines in the world at once. And,
when he came near, the water grew boiling-hot ; not that
that hurt him in the least : but it also grew as foul as
gruel ; and every moment he stumbled over dead shells,
and fish, and sharks, and seals, and whales, which had
been killed by the hot water.

And at last he came to the great sea-serpent himself,
lying dead at the bottom ; and as he was too thick to
scramble over, Tom had to walk round him three-
quarters of a mile and more, which put him out of his

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 319

path sadly ; and, when he had got round, he came to
the place called Stop. And there he stopped, and just
in time.

For he was on the edge of a vast hole in the bottom
of the sea, up which was rushing and roaring clear steam
enough to work all the engines in the world at once ; so
clear, indeed, that it was quite light at moments ; and
Tom could see almost up to the top of the water above,
and down below into the pit for nobody knows how far.

But, as soon as he bent his head over the edge, he
got such a rap on the nose from pebbles, that he jumped
back again ; for the steam, as it rushed up, rasped away
the sides of the hole, and hurled it up into the sea in a
shower of mud and gravel and ashes ; and then it spread
all around, and sank again, and covered in the dead fish
so fast, that before Tom had stood there five minutes he
was buried in silt up to his ankles, and began to be
afraid that he should have been buried alive.

And perhaps he would have been, but that while he
was thinking, the whole piece of ground on which he
stood was torn off and blown upwards, and away flew
Tom a mile up through the sea, wondering what was
coming next.

At last he stopped — thump ! and found himself tight

320 THE WATER-BABIES:

in the legs of the most wonderful bogy which he had
ever seen.

It had I don’t know how many wings, as big as the
sails of a windmill, and spread out in a ring like them ;
and with them it hovered over the steam which rushed
up, as a ball hovers over the top of a fountain. And for
every wing above it had a leg below, with a claw like a
comb at the tip, and a nostril at the root ; and in the
middle it had no stomach and one eye ; and as for its
mouth, that was all on one side, as the madreporiform
tubercle in a star-fish is. Well, it was a very strange
beast ; but no stranger than some dozens which you
may see.

“What do you want here,” it cried quite peevishly,
“getting in my way?” and it tried to drop Tom: but
he held on tight to its claws, thinking himself safer
where he was.

So Tom told him who he was, and what his errand
was. And the thing winked its one eye, and sneered :

“ I am too old to be taken in in that way. You are
come after gold — I know you are.”

“Gold! What is gold?” And really Tom did not
know ; but the suspicious old bogy would not believe
him.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

32 1

But after a while Tom began to understand a little.
For, as the vapours came up out of the hole, the bogy
smelt them with his nostrils, and combed them and
sorted them with his combs ; and then, when they
steamed up through them against his wings, they were
changed into showers and streams of metal. From one
wing fell gold-dust, and from another silver, and from
another copper, and from another tin, and from another
lead, and so on, and sank into the soft mud, into veins
and cracks, and hardened there. Whereby it comes to
pass that the rocks are full of metal.

But, all of a sudden, somebody shut off the steam
below, and the hole was left empty in an instant : and
then down rushed the water into the hole, in such a
whirlpool that the bogy spun round and round as fast
as a teetotum. But that was all in his day’s work, like
a fair fall with the hounds ; so all he did was to say to
Tom —

“ Now is your time, youngster, to get down, it you
are in earnest, which I don’t believe.”

“You’ll soon see,” said Tom ; and away he went, as
bold as Baron Munchausen, and shot down the rushing
cataract like a salmon at Ballisodare.

And, when he got to the bottom, he swam till he was

v

322

THE WATER-BABIES:

washed on shore safe upon the Other-end-of-Nowhere ;
and he found it, to his surprise, as most other people do,
much more like This-End-of-Somewhere than he had
been in the habit of expecting.

And first he went through Waste-paper-land, where
all the stupid books lie in heaps, up hill and down dale,
like leaves in a winter wood ; and there he saw people
digging and grubbing among them, to make worse books
out of bad ones, and thrashing chaff to save the dust of
it ; and a very good trade they drove thereby, especially
among children.

Then he went by the sea of slops, to the mountain of
messes, and the territory of tuck, where the ground was
very sticky, for it was all made of bad toffee (not Everton
toffee, of course), and full of deep cracks and holes choked
with wind-fallen fruit, and green gooseberries, and sloes,
and crabs, and whinberries, and hips and haws, and all
the nasty things which little children will eat, if they can
get them. But the fairies hide them out of the way in
that country as fast as they can, and very hard work
they have, and of very little use it is. For as fast as
they hide away the old trash, foolish and wicked people
make fresh trash full of lime and poisonous paints, and
actually go and steal receipts out of old Madame Science’s

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 323

big book to invent poisons for little children, and sell
them at wakes and fairs and tuck-shops. Very well.
Let them go on. Dr. Letheby and Dr. H assail cannot
catch them, though they are setting traps for them all
day long. But the Fairy with the birch-rod will catch
them all in time, and make them begin at one corner of
their shops, and eat their way out at the other : by which
time they will have got such stomach-aches as will cure
them of poisoning little children.

Next he saw all the little people in the world, writing-
all the little books in the world, about all the other little
people in the world ; probably because they had no great
people to write about : and if the names of the books
were not Squeeky, nor the Pumplighter, nor the Narrow
Narrow World, nor the Hills of the Chattermuch, nor
the Children’s Twaddeday, why then they were some¬
thing else. And all the rest of the little people in the
world read the books, and thought themselves each as
good as the President ; and perhaps they were right, for
every one knows his own business best. But Tom
thought he would sooner have a jolly good fairy tale,
about Jack the Giant-killer or Beauty and the Beast,
which taught him something that he didn’t know already.

And next he came to the centre of Creation (the hub,

324 THE WATER-BABIES:

they call it there), which lies in latitude 42*21° south, and
longitude 108*56' east.

And there he found all the wise people instructing
mankind in the science of spirit-rapping, while their
house was burning over their heads : and when Tom
told them of the fire, they held an indignation meeting
forthwith, and unanimously determined to hang Tom’s
dog for coming into their country with gunpowder in his
mouth. Tom couldn’t help saying that though they did
fancy they had carried all the wit away with them out of
Lincolnshire two hundred years ago, yet if they had had
one such Lincolnshire nobleman among them as good
old Lord Yarborough, he would have called for the fire-
engines before he hanged other people’s dogs. But it
was of no use, and the dog was hanged : and Tom

7 O O

couldn’t even have his carcase ; for they had abolished
the have -his -carcase act in that country, for fear lest
when rogues fell out, honest men should come by their
own. And so they would have succeeded perfectly, as
they always do, only that (as they also always do) they
failed in one little particular, viz. that the dog would not
die, being a water-dog, but bit their fingers so abominably
that they were forced to let him go, and Tom likewise,
as British subjects. Whereon they recommenced rapping

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 325

for the spirits of their fathers ; and very much astonished
the poor old spirits were when they came, and saw how,
according to the laws of Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, their
descendants had weakened their constitution by hard
living.

Then came Tom to the Island of Polupragmosyne
(which some call Rogues’ Harbour; but they are wrong;
for that is in the middle of Bramshill Bushes, and the
county police have cleared it out long ago). There
every one knows his neighbour’s business better than his
own ; and a very noisy place it is, as might be expected,
considering that all the inhabitants are ex officio on the
wrong- side of the house in the “ Parliament of Man, and

o

the Federation of the World ; ” and are always making
wry mouths, and crying that the fairies’ grapes were
sour.

There Tom saw ploughs drawing horses, nails driv¬
ing hammers, birds’ nests taking boys, books making
authors, bulls keeping china - shops, monkeys shaving
cats, dead dogs drilling live lions, blind brigadiers shelfed
as principals of colleges, play - actors not in the least
shelfed as popular preachers ; and, in short, every one
set to do something which he had not learnt, because in
what he had learnt, or pretended to learn, he had failed.

326

THE WATER-BABIES:

There stands the Pantheon of the Great Unsuccess¬
ful, from the builders of the Tower of Babel to those
of the Trafalgar Fountains ; in which politicians lecture
on the constitutions which ought to have marched,
conspirators on the revolutions which ought to have
succeeded, economists on the schemes which ought to
have made every one’s fortune, and projectors on the
discoveries which ought to have set the Thames on
fire. There cobblers lecture on orthopedy (whatsoever
that may be) because they cannot sell their shoes ; and
poets on /Esthetics (whatsoever that may be) because
they cannot sell their poetry. There philosophers de¬
monstrate that England would be the freest and richest
country in the world, if she would only turn Papist
again ; penny-a-liners abuse the Times, because they
have not wit enough to get on its staff ; and young
ladies walk about with lockets of Charles the First’s
hair (or of somebody else’s, when the Jews’ genuine
stock is used up), inscribed with the neat and appro¬
priate legend — which indeed is popular through all that
land, and which, I hope, you will learn to translate in
due time and to perpend likewise : —

<<

Victrix causa diis placuit, sed victa puellisd

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 327

When he got into the middle of the town, they all
set on him at once, to show him his way ; or rather,
to show him that he did not knowr his way ; for as for
asking him what way he wanted to go, no one ever
thought of that.

But one pulled him hither, and another poked him
thither, and a third cried —

“You mustn’t go west, I tell you; it is destruction
to go west.”

“ But I am not going west, as you may see,’’ said
T om.

And another, “ The east lies here, my dear ; I assure
you this is the east.”

“ But I don’t want to go east,” said Tom.

“Well, then, at all events, whichever way you are
going, you are going wrong,” cried they all with one
voice — which was the only thing which they ever agreed
about ; and all pointed at once to all the thirty-and-two
points of the compass, till Tom thought all the sign-posts
in England had got together, and fallen fighting.

And whether he would have ever escaped out of
the town, it is hard to say, if the dog had not taken it
into his head that they were going to pull his master in
pieces, and tackled them so sharply about the gastroc-

328 THE WATER-BABIES:

nemius muscle, that he gave them some business of their
own to think of at last ; and while they were rubbing
their bitten calves, Tom and the dog got safe away.

On the borders of that island he found Gotham,
where the wise men live ; the same who dragged the
pond because the moon had fallen into it, and planted
a hedge round the cuckoo, to keep spring all the year.
And he found them bricking up the town gate, because
it was so wide that little folks could not get through.
And, when he asked why, they told him they were
expanding their liturgy. So he went on ; for it was no
business of his : only he could not help saying that in
his country, if the kitten could not get in at the same
hole as the cat, she might stay outside and mew.

But he saw the end of such fellows, when he came
to the island of the Golden Asses, where nothing but
thistles grow. For there they were all turned into
mokes with ears a yard long, for meddling with matters
which they do not understand, as Lucius did in the
story. And like him, mokes they must remain, till, by
the laws of development, the thistles develop into roses.
Till then, they must comfort themselves with the thought,
that the longer their ears are, the thicker their hides ;
and so a good beating don’t hurt them.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 329

Then came Tom to the great land of Hearsay, in
which are no less than thirty and odd kings, beside half
a dozen Republics, and perhaps more by next mail.

And there he fell in with a deep, dark, deadly, and
destructive war, waged by the princes and potentates of
those parts, both spiritual and temporal, against what do
you think ? One thing I am sure of. That unless I
told you, you would never know ; nor how they waged
that war either ; for all their strategy and art military
consisted in the safe and easy process of stopping their
ears and screaming, “ Oh, don’t tell us !” and then running
away.

So when Tom came into that land, he found them
all, high and low, man, woman, and child, running for
their lives day and night continually, and entreating not
to be told they didn’t know what : only the land being
an island, and they having a dislike to the water (being
a musty lot for the most part) they ran round and round
the shore for ever, which (as the island was exactly of
the same circumference as the planet on which we have
the honour of living) was hard work, especially to those
who had business to look after. But before them, as
bandmaster and fugleman, ran a gentleman shearing a
pig ; the melodious strains of which animal led them for

330 THE WATER-BABIES :

ever, if not to conquest, still to flight ; and kept up their
spirits mightily with the thought that they would at least
have the pig’s wool for their pains.

And running after them, day and night, came such a
poor, lean, seedy, hard-worked old giant, as ought to have
been cockered up, and had a good dinner given him, and
a good wife found him, and been set to play with little
children ; and then he would have been a very present¬
able old fellow after all ; for he had a heart, though it
was considerably overgrown with brains.

He was made up principally of fish bones and parch¬
ment, put together with wire and Canada balsam ; and
smelt strongly of spirits, though he never drank anything
but water : but spirits he used somehow, there was no
denying. He had a great pair of spectacles on his nose,
and a butterfly-net in one hand, and a geological hammer
in the other ; and was hung all over with pockets,
full of collecting boxes, bottles, microscopes, telescopes,
barometers, ordnance maps, scalpels, forceps, photo¬
graphic apparatus, and all other tackle for finding out
everything about everything, and a little more too.
And, most strange of all, he was running not forwards
but backwards, as fast as he could.

Away all the good folks ran from him, except Tom,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 331

who stood his ground and dodged between his legs ; and
the giant, when he had passed him, looked down, and
cried, as if he was quite pleased and comforted, —

“What? who are you? And you actually don’t
run away, like all the rest ?” But he had to take his
spectacles off, Tom remarked, in order to see him
plainly.

Tom told him who he was ; and the giant pulled out
a bottle and a cork instantly, to collect him with.

But Tom was too sharp for that, and dodged between
his legs and in front of him ; and then the giant could
not see him at all.

“No, no, no!” said Tom, “I’ve not been round the
world, and through the world, and up to Mother Carey’s
haven, beside being caught in a net and called a
Holothurian and a Cephalopod, to be bottled up by any
old giant like you.”

And when the giant understood what a great
traveller Tom had been, he made a truce with him at
once, and would have kept him there to this day to
pick his brains, so delighted was he at finding any one
to tell him what he did not know before.

“Ah, you lucky little dog!” said he at last, quite
simply — for he was the simplest, pleasantest, honestest,

332 THE WATER-BABIES:

kindliest old Dominie Sampson of a giant that ever
turned the world upside down without intending it —
“ah, you lucky little dog! If I had only been where
you have been, to see what you have seen !”

“Well,” said Tom, “if you want to do that, you had
best put your head under water for a few hours, as I
did, and turn into a water-baby, or some other baby, and
then you might have a chance,”

“Turn into a baby, eh? If I could do that, and
know what was happening to me for but one hour, I
should know everything then, and be at rest. But I
can’t ; I can’t be a little child again ; and I suppose if I
could, it would be no use, because then I should then
know nothing about what was happening to me. Ah,
you lucky little dog!” said the poor old giant.

“But why do you run after all these poor people?”
said Tom, who liked the giant very much.

“ My dear, it’s they that have been running after me,
father and son, for hundreds and hundreds of years,
throwing stones at me till they have knocked off my
spectacles fifty times, and calling me a malignant and a
turbaned Turk, who beat a Venetian and traduced the
State — goodness only knows what they mean, for I never
read poetry — and hunting me round and round — though

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 333

catch me they can’t, for every time I go over the same
ground, I go the faster, and grow the bigger. While all
I want is to be friends with them, and to tell them some¬
thing to their advantage, like Mr. Joseph Ady : only
somehow they are so strangely afraid of hearing it. But, I
suppose I am not a man of the world, and have no tact.”

“ But why don’t you turn round and tell them so ? ”

“ Because I can’t. You see, I am one of the sons of
Epimetheus, and must go backwards, if I am to go
at all.”

“ But why don’t you stop, and let them come up
to you ?”

“Why, my dear, only think. If I did, all the butter¬
flies and cockyolybirds would fly past me, and then I
should catch no more new species, and should grow
rusty and mouldy, and die. And I don’t intend to do
that, my dear ; for I have a destiny before me, they say :
though what it is I don’t know, and don’t care.”

“ Don’t care ?” said Tom.

“ No. Do the duty which lies nearest you, and catch
the first beetle you come across, is my motto ; and I have
thriven by it for some hundred years. Now I must go
on. Dear me, while I have been talking to you, at least
nine new species have escaped me.”

334 THE WATER-BABIES:

And on went the giant, behind before, like a bull in a
china shop, till he ran into the steeple of the great idol
temple (for they are all idolaters in those parts, of course,
else they would never be afraid of giants), and knocked
the upper half clean off, hurting himself horribly about
the small of the back.

But little he cared ; for as soon as the ruins of the
steeple were well between his legs, he poked and peered
among the falling stones, and shifted his spectacles, and
pulled out his pocket-magnifier, and cried — -

“ An entirely new Oniscus, and three obscure
Podurellse ! Besides a moth which M. le Roi des
Papillons (though he, like all Frenchmen, is given to
hasty inductions) says is confined to the limits of the
Glacial Drift. This is most important!”

And down he sat on the nave of the temple (not
being a man of the world) to examine his Podurellae.
Whereon (as was to be expected) the roof caved in
bodily, smashing the idols, and sending the priests flying
out of doors and windows, like rabbits out of a burrow
when a ferret goes in.

But he never heeded ; for out of the dust flew a bat,
and the giant had him in a moment.

“ Dear me ! This is even more important ! Here is

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 335

a cognate species to that which Macgilliwaukie Brown
insists is confined to the Buddhist temples of Little
Thibet ; and now when I look at it, it may be only a
variety produced by difference of climate!”

And having bagged his bat, up he got, and on he
went ; while all the people ran, being in none the better
humour for having their temple smashed for the sake of
three obscure species of Podurella, and a Buddhist bat.

“Well,” thought Tom, “this is a very pretty quarrel,
with a good deal to be said on both sides. But it is no
business of mine.”

And no more it was, because he was a water-baby,
and had the original sow by the right ear ; which you
will never have, unless you be a baby, whether of the
water, the land, or the air, matters not, provided you can
only keep on continually being a baby.

So the giant ran round after the people, and the
people ran round after the giant, and they are running
unto this day for aught I know, or do not know ; and
will run till either he, or they, or both, turn into little
children. And then, as Shakespeare says (and therefore
it must be true) —

“ Jack shall have Gill

336 THE WATER-BABIES:

Nought shall go ill

The man shall have his mare again , and all go welld

Then Tom came to a very famous island, which was
called, in the days of the great traveller Captain Gulliver,
the Isle of Laputa. But Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudicl has
named it over again, the Isle of Tomtoddies, all heads
and no bodies.

And when Tom came near it, he heard such a
grumbling and grunting and growling and wailing and
weeping and whining that he thought people must be
ringing little pigs, or cropping puppies’ ears, or drowning
kittens : but when he came nearer still, he began to hear
words among the noise; which was the Tomtoddies’
song which they sing morning and evening, and all night
too, to their great idol Examination —

“ I cant learn my lesson : the examiner s coming ! ’ ’

And that was the only song which they knew.

And when Tom got on shore the first thing he saw
was a great pillar, on one side of which was inscribed,
“Playthings not allowed here;” at which he was so
shocked that he would not stay to see what was written
on the other side. Then he looked round for the people

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 337

of the island : but instead of men, women, and children,
he found nothing but turnips and radishes, beet and
mangold wurzel, without a single green leaf among them,
and half of them burst and decayed, with toad -stools
growing out of them. Those which were left began
crying to Tom, in half a dozen different languages at
once, and all of them badly spoken, “ I can’t learn my
lesson; do come and help me!” And one cried, “ Can
you show me how to extract this square root ?”

And another, “ Can you tell me the distance between
a Lyrae and /3 Camelopardis ?”

And another, “What is the latitude and longitude of
Snooksville, in Noman’s County, Oregon, U.S. ?”

And another, “ What was the name of Mutius
Scaevola’s thirteenth cousin's grandmother’s maid’s cat ?”

And another, “ How long would it take a school-
inspector of average activity to tumble head over heels
from London to York ?”

And another, “ Can you tell me the name of a place
that nobody ever heard of, where nothing ever happened,
in a country which has not been discovered yet ?”

And another, “Can you show me how to correct this
hopelessly corrupt passage of Graidiocolosyrtus Taben-
niticus, on the cause why crocodiles have no tongues ?”

z

338 THE WATER-BABIES:

And so on, and so on, and so on, till one would have
thought they were all trying for tide-waiters’ places, or
cornetcies in the heavy dragoons.

“And wrhat good on earth will it do you if I did tell
you ?” quoth Tom.

Well, they didn’t know that: all they knew was the
examiner was coming.

Then Tom stumbled on the hugest and softest nimble-
comequick turnip you ever saw filling a hole in a crop of
swedes, and it cried to him, “ Can you tell me anything
at all about anything you like ?”

“About what ?” says Tom.

“About anything you like; for as fast as I learn
things I forget them again. So my mamma says that
my intellect is not adapted for methodic science, and
says that I must go in for general information.”

Tom told him that he did not know general informa¬
tion, nor any officers in the army ; only he had a friend
once that went for a drummer : but he could tell him a
great many strange things which he had seen in his
travels.

So he told him prettily enough, while the poor turnip
listened very carefully ; and the more he listened, the
more he forgot, and the more water ran out of him.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 339

Tom thought he was crying : but it was only his
poor brains running away, from being worked so hard ;
and as Tom talked, the unhappy turnip streamed down
all over with juice, and split
and shrank till nothing was
left of him but rind and
water ; whereat Tom ran
away in a fright, for he
thought he might be taken
up for killing the turnip.

But, on the contrary, the
turnip’s parents were highly
delighted, and considered him
a saint and a martyr, and
put up a long inscription over his tomb about his
wonderful talents, early development, and unparalleled
precocity. Were they not a foolish couple ? But there
was a still more foolish couple next to them, who were
beating a wretched little radish, no bigger than my
thumb, for sullenness and obstinacy and wilful stupidity,
and never knew that the reason why it couldn’t learn or
hardly even speak was, that there was a great worm
inside it eating out all its brains. But even they are no
foolisher than some hundred score of papas and mammas,

340 THE WATER-BABIES:

who fetch the rod when they ought to fetch a new toy,
and send to the dark cupboard instead of to the
doctor.

Tom was so puzzled and frightened with all he saw,
that he was longing to ask the meaning of it ; and at
last he stumbled over a respectable old stick lying half
covered with earth. But a very stout and worthy stick
it was, for it belonged to good Roger Ascham in old
time, and had carved on its head King Edward the
Sixth, with the Bible in his hand.

“You see,” said the stick, “ there were as pretty little
children once as you could wish to see, and might have
been so still if they had been only left to grow up like
human beings, and then handed over to me ; but their
foolish fathers and mothers, instead of letting them pick
flowers, and make dirt- pies, and get birds’ nests, and
dance round the gooseberry bush, as little children
should, kept them always at lessons, working, working,
working, learning week-day lessons all week-days, and
Sunday lessons all Sunday, and weekly examinations
every Saturday, and monthly examinations every month,
and yearly examinations every year, everything seven
times over, as if once was not enough, and enough as
good as a feast — till their brains grew big, and their

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 341

bodies grew small, and they were all changed into
turnips, with little but water inside ; and still their
foolish parents actually pick the leaves off them as fast
as they grow, lest they should have anything green
about them.”

“Ah!" said Tom, “if dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbe-
doneby knew of it she would send them a lot of tops,
and balls, and marbles, and ninepins, and make them all
as jolly as sand-boys.”

“ It would be no use,” said the stick. “They can't
play now, if they tried. Don’t you see how their legs
have turned to roots and grown into the ground, by
never taking any exercise, but sapping and moping
always in the same place ? But here comes the Ex-
aminer-of-all-Examiners. So you had better get away,
I warn you, or he will examine you and your dog into
the bargain, and set him to examine all the other dogs,
and you to examine all the other water-babies. There
is no escaping out of his hands, for his nose is nine
thousand miles long, and can go down chimneys and
through keyholes, upstairs, downstairs, in my lady’s
chamber, examining all little boys, and the little boys’
tutors likewise. But when he is thrashed — so Mrs.
Bedonebyasyoudid has promised me — I shall have the

342

THE WATER-BABIES:

thrashing of him : and if I don’t lay it on with a will it’s

•a ))

a pity.

Tom went off: but rather slowly and surlily; for he
was somewhat minded to face this same Examiner-of-all-
Examiners, who came striding among the poor turnips,
binding heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, and
laying them on little children’s shoulders, like the Scribes
and Pharisees of old, and not touching the same with one
of his fingers ; for he had plenty of money, and a fine
house to live in, and so forth ; which was more than the
poor little turnips had.

But when he got near, he looked so big and burly
and dictatorial, and shouted so loud to Tom, to
come and be examined, that Tom ran for his life,
and the dog too. And really it was time ; for the
poor turnips, in their hurry and fright, crammed
themselves so fast to be ready for the Examiner, that
they burst and popped by dozens all round him, till
the place sounded like Aldershot on a field-day, and
Tom thought he should be blown into the air, dog
and all.

As he went down to the shore he passed the poor
turnip’s new tomb. But Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid had
taken away the epitaph about talents and precocity and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 343

development, and put up one of her own instead which
Tom thought much more sensible : —

“ Instruction sore long time I bore ,

A nd cramming was in vain ;

Till heaven did please my woes to ease ,

With water on the brain I

So Tom jumped into the sea, and swam on his way,
singing : —

“ Farewell , Tomtoddies all ; I thank my stars
That nought I know save those three royal r s :
Reading and riting sure , with rithmetick ,

Will help a lad of sense through thin and thick. "

Whereby you may see that Tom was no poet : but no
more was John Bunyan, though he was as wise a man as
you will meet in a month of Sundays.

And next he came to Oldwivesfabledom, where the
folks were all heathens, and worshipped a howling ape.

And there he found a little boy sitting in the middle
of the road, and crying bitterly.

“ W hat are you crying for ?” said Tom.

“ Because I am not as frightened as I could wish to

344

THE WATER-BABIES :

“ Not frightened ? You are a queer little chap : but,
if you want to be frightened, here goes — Boo!’’

“Ah,” said the little boy, “that is very kind of you ;
but I don’t feel that it has made any impression.”

Tom offered to upset him, punch him, stamp on him,
fettle him over the head with a brick, or anything
else whatsoever which would give him the slightest
comfort.

But he only thanked Tom very civilly, in fine long
words which he had heard other folk use, and which,
therefore, he thought were fit and proper to use himself ;
and cried on till his papa and mamma came, and sent off
for the Powwow man immediately. And a very good-
natured gentleman and lady they were, though they were
heathens ; and talked quite pleasantly to Tom about his
travels, till the Powwow man arrived, with his thunder-
box under his arm.

And a well-fed, ill-favoured gentleman he was, as
ever served Her Majesty at Portland. Tom was a little
frightened at first ; for he thought it was Grimes. But
he soon saw his mistake : for Grimes always looked a
man in the face ; and this fellow never did. And when
he spoke, it was fire and smoke ; and when he sneezed,
it was squibs and crackers ; and when he cried (which

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. i '345

he did whenever it paid him), it was boiling pitch ; and
some of it was sure to stick.

“ Here we are again!’’ cried he, like the clown in a
pantomime. “So you can’t feel frightened, my little
dear — eh ? I’ll do that for you. I’ll make an impres¬
sion on you ! Yah! Boo! Whirroo! Hullabaloo!”

And he rattled, thumped, brandished his thunder-
box, yelled, shouted, raved, roared, stamped, and danced
corrobory like any black fellow ; and then he touched a
spring in the thunderbox, and out popped turnip-ghosts
and magic-lanthorns and pasteboard bogies and spring-
heeled Jacks and sallaballas, with such a horrid din,
clatter, clank, roll, rattle, and roar, that the little boy
turned up the whites of his eyes, and fainted right away.

And at that his poor heathen papa and mamma were
as much delighted as if they had found a gold mine ; and
fell down upon their knees before the Powwow man, and
gave him a palanquin with a pole of solid silver and
curtains of cloth of gold ; and carried him about in it on
their own backs : but as soon as they had taken him up,
the pole stuck to their shoulders, and they could not set
him down any more, but carried him on willynilly, as
Sinbad carried the old man of the sea : which was a
pitiable sight to see ; for the father was a very brave

346

THE WATER-BABIES:

officer, and wore two swords and a blue button ; and the
mother was as pretty a lady as ever had pinched feet
like a Chinese. But you see, they had chosen to do a
foolish thing just once too often ; so, by the laws of
Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid, they had to go on doing it
whether they chose or not, till the coming of the
Cocqcigrues.

Ah ! don’t you wish that some one would go and
convert those poor heathens, and teach them not to
frighten their little children into fits ?

“ Now, then,” said the Powwow man to Tom,
“ wouldn’t you like to be frightened, my little dear ?
For I can see plainly that you are a very wicked,
, naughty, graceless, reprobate boy.”

“You’re another,” quoth Tom, very sturdily. And
when the man ran at him, and cried “ Boo !” Tom ran
at him in return, and cried “Boo!” likewise, right in
his face, and set the little dog upon him ; and at his legs
the dog went.

At which, if you will believe it, the fellow turned tail,
thunderbox and all, with a “Woof!” like an old sow on
the common ; and ran for his life, screaming, “ Help !
thieves! murder! fire! He is going to kill me! I am a
ruined man ! He will murder me ; and break, burn, and

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

347

destroy my precious and invaluable thunderbox ; and
then you will have no more thunder-showers in the land.
Help! help! help!”

At which the papa and mamma and all the people
of Oldwivesfabledom flew at Tom, shouting, “ Oh, the
wicked, impudent, hard-hearted, graceless boy ! Beat
him, kick him, shoot him, drown him, hang him, burn
him ! " and so forth : but luckily they had nothing to
shoot, hang, or burn him with, for the fairies had hid all
the killing-tackle out of the way a little while before ; so
they could only pelt him with stones ; and some of the
stones went clean through him, and came out the other
side. But he did not mind that a bit ; for the holes
closed up again as fast as they were made, because he
was a water-baby. However, he was very glad when
he was safe out of the country, for the noise there made
him all but deaf.

Then he came to a very quiet place, called Leave-
heavenalone. And there the sun was drawing water
out of the sea to make steam-threads, and the wind was
twisting them up to make cloud -patterns, till they had
worked between them the loveliest wedding veil ol
Chantilly lace, and hung it up in their own Crystal
Palace for any one to buy who could afford it ; while

34§ THE WATER-BABIES :

the good old sea never grudged, for she knew they
would pay her back honestly. So the sun span, and the
wind wove, and all went well with the great steam-
loom ; as is likely, considering — and considering — and
considering —

And at last, after innumerable adventures, each more
wonderful than the last, he saw before him a huge build¬
ing, much bigger, and — what is most surprising — a little
uglier than a certain new lunatic asylum, but not built
quite of the same materials. None of it, at least — or,
indeed, for aught that I ever saw, any part of any other
building whatsoever — is cased with nine-inch brick inside
and out, and filled up with rubble between the walls, in
order that any gentleman who has been confined during
Her Majesty’s pleasure may be unconfined during his
own pleasure, and take a walk in the neighbouring park
to improve his spirits, after an hour’s light and whole¬
some labour with his dinner-fork or one of the legs of
his iron bedstead. No. The walls of this building
were built on an entirely different principle, which need
not be described, as it has not yet been discovered.

Tom walked towards this great building, wondering
what it was, and having a strange fancy that he might
find Mr. Grimes inside it, till he saw running toward

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 349

him, and shouting “Stop!” three or four people, who,
when they came nearer, w'ere nothing else than police¬
men’s truncheons, running along without legs or arms.

Tom was not astonished. He was long past that.
Besides, he had seen the naviculoe in the water move
nobody knows how, a hundred times,
without arms, or legs, or anything to
stand in their stead. Neither was he
frightened ; for he had been doing no
harm.

So he stopped ; and, when the fore¬
most truncheon came up and asked his «
business, he showed Mother Carey’s pass;
and the truncheon looked at it in the
oddest fashion ; for he had one eye in
the middle of his upper end, so that
when he looked at anything, being quite
stiff, he had to slope himself, and poke himself, till
it was a wonder why he did not tumble over ; but, being
quite full of the spirit of justice (as all policemen, and
their truncheons, ought to be), he was always in a position
of stable equilibrium, whichever way he put himself.

“All right — pass on,” said he at last. And then he
added : “I had better go with you, young man.” And

350 THE WATER-BABIES:

Tom had no objection, for such company was both
respectable and safe ; so the truncheon coiled its thong
neatly round its handle, to prevent tripping itself up —
for the thong had got loose in running — and marched on
by Tom’s side.

“Why have you no policeman to carry you?” asked
Tom, after a while.

“ Because we are not like those clumsy-made trun¬
cheons in the land - world, which cannot go without
having a whole man to carry them about. We do our
own work for ourselves ; and do it very well, though I
say it who should not.’’

“Then why have you a thong to your handle?”
asked Tom.

“To hang ourselves up by, of course, when we are
off duty.”

Tom had got his answer, and had no more to say,
till they came up to the great iron door of the prison.
And there the truncheon knocked twice, with its own
head.

A wicket in the door opened, and out looked a
tremendous old brass blunderbuss charged up to the
muzzle with slugs, who was the porter; and Tom started
back a little at the sight of him.

A FAIRY TALE

FOR

A LAND-BABY

gentleman from her ladyship, who wants to see Grimes,
the master-sweep.''

“Grimes? ” said the blunderbuss. And he pulled in
his muzzle, perhaps to look over his prison-lists.

“What case is this ? ” he asked in a deep voice, out
of his broad bell mouth.

“If you please, sir, it is no case; only a young

352 THE WATER-BABIES:

“Grimes is up chimney No. 345/' he said from
inside. “ So the young gentleman had better go on to
the roof.”

Tom looked up at the enormous wall, which seemed
at least ninety miles high, and wondered how he should
ever get up : but, when he hinted that to the truncheon,
it settled the matter in a moment. For it whisked round,
and gave him such a shove behind as sent him up to the
roof in no time, with his little dog under his arm.

And there he walked along the leads, till he met
another truncheon, and told him his errand.

“Very good,” it said. “Come along: but it will be
of no use. He is the most unremorseful, hard-hearted,
foul-mouthed fellow I have in charge ; and thinks about
nothing but beer and pipes, which are not allowed here,
of course.”

So they walked along over the leads, and very sooty
they were, and Tom thought the chimneys must want
sweeping very much. But he was surprised to see that
the soot did not stick to his feet, or dirty them in the
least. Neither did the live coals, which were lying
about in plenty, burn him ; for, being a water-baby, his
radical humours were of a moist and cold nature, as you
may read at large in Lemnius, Cardan, Van Helmont,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 353

and other gentlemen, who knew as much as they could,
and no man can know more.

And at last they came to chimney No. 345. Out of
the top of it, his head and shoulders just showing, stuck
poor Mr. Grimes, so sooty, and bleared, and ugly, that
Tom could hardly bear to look at him. And in his
mouth was a pipe ; but it was not a-light ; though he was
pulling at it with all his might.

“Attention, Mr. Grimes,” said the truncheon ; “here
is a gentleman come to see you.”

But Mr. Grimes only said bad words ; and kept
grumbling, “ My pipe won’t draw. My pipe won’t draw.”

“Keep a civil tongue, and attend!” said the truncheon;
and popped up just like Punch, hitting Grimes such a
crack over the head with itself, that his brains rattled
inside like a dried walnut in its shell. He tried to get his
hands out, and rub the place : but he could not, for they
were stuck fast in the chimney. Now he was forced to
attend.

“Hey!” he said, “why, it’s Tom! I suppose you
have come here to laugh at me, you spiteful little
atomy ?”

Tom assured him he had not, but only wanted to
help him.

2 A

354

THE WATER-BABIES:

“ I don’t want anything except beer, and that I can’t

get ; and a light to this bothering pipe, and that 1 can’t
get either.”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 355

“ I'll get you one,” said Tom ; and he took up a live
coal (there were plenty lying about) and put it to Grimes’
pipe : but it went out instantly.

“ It’s no use,” said the truncheon, leaning itself up
against the chimney and looking on. “ I tell you, it is
no use. His heart is so cold that it freezes everything
that comes near him. You will see that presently, plain
enough.”

“ Oh, of course, it’s my fault. Everything’s always
my fault,” said Grimes. “Now don’t go to hit me
again ” (for the truncheon started upright, and looked
very wicked); “you know, if my arms were only free,
you daren’t hit me then.”

The truncheon leant back against the chimney, and
took no notice of the personal insult, like a well-trained
policeman as it was, though he was ready enough to
avenge any transgression against morality or order.

“ But can’t I help you in any other way ? Can’t I
help you to get out of this chimney ?” said Tom.

“No,” interposed the truncheon; “he has come to
the place where everybody must help themselves ; and
he will find it out, I hope, before he has done with me.”

“Oh, yes,” said Grimes, “of course it’s me. Did I
ask to be brought here into the prison ? Did I ask to be

356 THE WATER-BABIES:

set to sweep your foul chimneys ? Did I ask to have
lighted straw put under me to make me go up ? Did 1
ask to stick fast in the very first chimney of all, because
it was so shamefully clogged up with soot ? Did I ask
to stay here — I don’t know how long — a hundred years,
I do believe, and never get my pipe, nor my beer, nor
nothing fit for a beast, let alone a man ?”

“ No,” answered a solemn voice behind. “ No more
did Tom, when you behaved to him in the very same
way.”

J

It was Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid. And, when the
truncheon saw her, it started bolt upright — Attention ! —
and made such a low bow, that if it had not been full of
the spirit of justice, it must have tumbled on its end, and
probably hurt its one eye. And Tom made his bow too.

“Oh, ma’am,” he said, “don’t think about me; that’s
all past and gone, and good times and bad times and all
times pass over. But may not I help poor Mr. Grimes ?
Mayn’t I try and get some of these bricks away, that he
may move his arms ?”

“You may try, of course,” she said.

So Tom pulled and tugged at the bricks : but he
could not move one. And then he tried to wipe Mr.
Grimes’s face : but the soot would not come off.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 357

“ Oh, dear ! ” he said, “ I have come all this way,
through all these terrible places, to help you, and now I
am of no use at all.”

“You had best leave me alone,” said Grimes; “you
are a good-natured forgiving little chap, and that’s truth ;
but you’d best be off. The hail’s coming on soon, and
it will beat the eyes out of your little head.”

“What hail?”

“ Why, hail that falls every evening here ; and, till it
comes close to me, it’s like so much warm rain : but then
it turns to hail over my head, and knocks me about like
small shot.”

“ That hail will never come any more,” said the strange
lady. “ I have told you before what it was. It was
your mother’s tears, those which she shed when she
prayed for you by her bedside ; but your cold heart froze
it into hail. But she is gone to heaven now, and will
weep no more for her graceless* son.”

Then Grimes was silent awhile ; and then he looked
very sad.

“ So my old mother’s gone, and I never there to
speak to her ! Ah ! a good woman she was, and might
have been a happy one, in her little school there in
Vendale, if it hadn’t been for me and my bad ways.”

358 THE WATER-BABIES :

“ Did she keep the school in Vendale ?” asked 1 oni.
And then he told Grimes all the story of his going to
her house, and how she could not abide the sight of a
chimney-sweep, and then how kind she was, and how he
turned into a water-baby.

“Ah!” said Grimes, “good reason she had to hate
the sight of a chimney-sweep. I ran away from her
and took up with the sweeps, and never let her know
where I was, nor sent her a penny to help her, and now
it’s too late — too late !” said Mr. Grimes.

And he began crying and blubbering like a great
baby, till his pipe dropped out of his mouth, and broke
all to bits.

“ Oh, dear, if I was but a little chap in Vendale again,
to see the clear beck, and the apple-orchard, and the
yew-hedge, how different I would go on ! But it’s too
late now. So you go along, you kind little chap, and
don’t stand to look at a man crying, that’s old enough to
be your father, and never feared the face of man, nor of
worse neither. But I’m beat now, and beat I must be.
I’ve made my bed, and I must lie on it. Foul I would
be, and foul I am, as an Irishwoman said to me once ; and
little I heeded it. It’s all my own fault : but it’s too late.”
And he cried so bitterly that Tom began crying too.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 359

“ Never too late,” said the fairy, in such a strange
soft new voice that Tom looked up at her ; and she was
so beautiful for the moment, that Tom half fancied she
was her sister.

No more was it too late. For, as poor Grimes cried
and blubbered on, his own tears did what his mothers
could not do, and Tom’s could not do, and nobody’s on
earth could do for him ; for they washed the soot off his
face and off his clothes ; and then they washed the
mortar away from between the bricks ; and the chimney
crumbled down ; and Grimes began to get out of it.

Up jumped the truncheon, and was going to hit him
on the crown a tremendous thump, and drive him down
again like a cork into a bottle. But the strange lady
put it aside.

“Will you obey me if I give you a chance ?”

“ As you please, ma’am. You’re stronger than me,
that I know too well, and wiser than me, I know too
well also. And, as for being my own master, I’ve fared
ill enough with that as yet. So whatever your ladyship
pleases to order me ; for I’m beat, and that’s the truth.”

“ Be it so then — you may come out. But remember,
disobey me again, and into a worse place still you go.”

“ I beg pardon, ma’am, but I never disobeyed you

360 THE WATER-BABIES:

that I know of. I never had the honour of setting eyes
upon you till I came to these ugly quarters.”

“ Never saw me ? Who said to you, Those that will
be foul, foul they will be ?”

Grimes looked up ; and Tom looked up too ; for the
voice was that of the Irishwoman who met them the day
that they went out together to Harthover. “ I gave you
your warning then : but you gave it yourself a thousand
times before and since. Every bad word that you said
— every cruel and mean thing that you did — every time
that you got tipsy — every day that you went dirty — you
were disobeying me, whether you knew it or not.”

“ If I’d only known, ma’am - ”

“You knew well enough that you were disobeying
something, though you did not know it was me. But
come out and take your chance. Perhaps it may be
your last.”

So Grimes stepped out of the chimney, and really, if
it had not been for the scars on his face, he looked as
clean and respectable as a master-sweep need look.

“Take him away,” said she to the truncheon, “and
give him his ticket-of-leave.”

“And what is he to do, ma’am ?”

“ Get him to sweep out the crater of Etna ; he will

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 361

find some very steady men working out their time there,
who will teach him his business : but mind, if that crater
gets choked again, and there is an earthquake in con¬
sequence, bring them all to me, and I shall investigate
the case very severely.”

So the truncheon marched off Mr. Grimes, looking as
meek as a drowned worm.

And for aught I know, or do not know, he is sweeping
the crater of Etna to this very day.

“And now,” said the fairy to Tom, “your work here
is done. You may as well go back again.”

“I should be glad enough to go,” said Tom, “but
how am I to get up that great hole again, now the steam
has stopped blowing ?”

“ I will take you up the backstairs : but I must bandage
your eyes first ; for I never allow anybody to see those
backstairs of mine.”

“ I am sure I shall not tell anybody about them,
ma’am, if you bid me not.”

“Aha! So you think, my little man. But you would
soon forget your promise if you got back into the land-
world. For, if people only once found out that you had
been up my backstairs, you would have all the fine ladies
kneeling to you, and the rich men emptying their purses

362

THE WATER-BABIES :

before you, and statesmen offering you place and power ;
and young and old, rich and poor, crying to you, ‘ Only
tell us the great backstairs secret, and we will be your
slaves ; we will make you lord, king, emperor, bishop,
archbishop, pope, if you like — only tell us the secret of
the backstairs. For thousands of years we have been
paying, and petting, and obeying, and worshipping quacks
who told us they had the key of the backstairs, and could
smuggle us up them ; and in spite of all our disappoint¬
ments, we will honour, and glorify, and adore, and beatify,
and transkite, and apotheotise you likewise, on the chance
of your knowing something about the backstairs, that we
may all go on pilgrimage to it ; and, even if we cannot
get up it, lie at the foot of it, and cry —

‘ Oh, backstairs ,
precious backstairs ,
invaluable backstairs ,
requisite backstairs ,
necessary backstairs ,
good-natured backstairs ,
cosmopolitan backstairs ,
comprehensive backstairs ,
accommodating backstairs ,

comfortable backstairs ,
humane backstairs ,
reasonable backstairs ,
long-sought backstairs ,
coveted backstairs ,
aristocratic backstairs ,
respectable backstairs ,
gentlema nlike backstairs ,

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY.

363

well-bred backstairs ,
commercial backstairs ,
economical backstairs ,
practical backstairs ,
logical backstairs ,
deductive backstairs ,

ladylike backstairs ,
orthodox backstairs ,
probable backstairs ,
credible backstairs ,
demonstrable backstairs ,
irrefragable backstairs ,

potent backstairs ,

<7 l l-but-omn i potent backsta irs,

<kfc.

Save us from the consequences of our own actions, and
from the cruel fairy, Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ! ’ Do not
you think that you would be a little tempted then to tell
what you know, laddie ?”

Tom thought so certainly. “ But why do they want
so to know about the backstairs ?" asked he, being a little
frightened at the long words, and not understanding them
the least ; as, indeed, he was not meant to do, or you
either.

“ That I shall not tell you. I never put things into
little folks’ heads which are but too likely to come there
of themselves. So come — now I must bandage your
eyes.” So she tied the bandage on his eyes with one
hand, and with the other she took it off.

364 THE WATER-BABIES:

“ Now,” she said, ‘‘you are safe up the stairs.” Tom
opened his eyes very wide, and his mouth too ; for he
had not, as he thought, moved a single step. But, when
he looked round him, there could be no doubt that he
was safe up the backstairs, whatsoever they may be,
which no man is going to tell you, for the plain reason
that no man knows.

The first thing which Tom saw was the black cedars,
high and sharp against the rosy dawn ; and St. B randan’s
Isle reflected double in the still broad silver sea. The
wind sang softly in the cedars, and the water sang among
the caves : the sea-birds sang as they streamed out into
the ocean, and the land-birds as they built among the
boughs ; and the air was so full of song that it stirred St.
Brandan and his hermits, as they slumbered in the shade;
and they moved their good old lips, and sang their
morning hymn amid their dreams. But among all the
songs one came across the water more sweet and clear
than all ; for it was the song of a young girl’s voice.

And what was the song which she sang ? Ah, my little
man, I am too old to sing that song, and you too young to
understand it. But have patience, and keep your eye
single, and your hands clean, and you will learn some day
to sing it yourself, without needing any man to teach you.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 365

And as Tom neared the island, there sat upon
a rock the most graceful creature that ever was seen,
looking down, with her chin upon her hand, and
paddling with her feet in
the water. And when
came to her she
looked up, and behold it
was Ellie.

“ Oh, Miss Ellie,” said
he, “ how you are grown!”

“Oh, Tom,” said she,

“ how you are grown
too !”

And no wonder ; they
were both quite grown
up — he into a tall man,
and she into a beautiful
woman.

“ Perhaps 1 may be grown,” she said. “ 1 have
had time enough ; for I have been sitting here waiting
for you many a hundred years, till I thought you were
never coming.”

“ Many a hundred years ?” thought Tom ; but he had
seen so much in his travels that he had quite given up

366 THE WATER-BABIES:

being astonished ; and, indeed, he could think of nothing
but Ellie. So he stood and looked at Elbe, and Ellie
looked at him ; and they liked the employment so much
that they stood and looked for seven years more, and
neither spoke nor stirred.

At last they heard the fairy say : “ Attention, children.
Are you never going to look at me again ?”

“ We have been looking at you all this while/’ they
said. And so they thought they had been.

“ Then look at me once more,” said she.

They looked — and both of them cried out at once,
“ Oh, who are you, after all ?”

“You are our dear Mrs. Doasyouwouldbedoneby.”

“No, you are good Mrs. Bedonebyasyoudid ; but
you are grown quite beautiful now!”

“To you,” said the fairy. “ But look again.”

“You are Mother Carey,” said Tom, in a very low,
solemn voice ; for he had found out something which
made him very happy, and yet frightened him more than
all that he had ever seen.

“ But you are grown quite young again.”

“To you,” said the fairy. “ Look again.”

“You are the Irishwoman who met me the day I
went to Harthover!”

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 367

And when they looked she was neither of them, and
yet all of them at once.

“ My name is written in my eyes, if you have eyes to
see it there.”

And they looked into her great, deep, soft eyes, and
they changed again and again into every hue, as the light
changes in a diamond.

“ Now read my name,” said she, at last.

And her eyes flashed, for one moment, clear, white,
blazing light : but the children could not read her name ;
for they were dazzled, and hid their faces in their hands.

“ Not yet, young things, not yet,” said she, smiling ;
and then she turned to Ellie.

“You may take him home with you now on Sundays,
Ellie. He has won his spurs in the great battle, and
become fit to go with you and be a man ; because he has
done the thing he did not like.”

So Tom went home with Ellie on Sundays, and
sometimes on week-days, too ; and he is now a great man
of science, and can plan railroads, and steam-engines, and
electric telegraphs, and rifled guns, and so forth ; and
knows everything about everything, except why a hen’s
egg don’t turn into a crocodile, and two or three other
little things which no one will know till the coming of

36S THE WATER-BABIES :

the Cocqcigrues. And all this from what he learnt
when he was a water-baby, underneath the sea.

“And of course Tom married Elbe ?”

My dear child, what a silly notion ! Don’t you know
that no one ever marries in a fairy tale, under the rank
of a prince or a princess ?

“ And Tom’s dog ?”

Oh, you may see him any clear night in J uly ; for the
old dog-star was so worn out by the last three hot
summers that there have been no dog-days since ; so that
they had to take him down and put Tom’s dog up in his
place. Therefore, as new brooms sweep clean, we may
hope for some warm weather this year. And that is the
end of my story.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 369

MORAL.

And now, my dear Little man, what should we learn
from this parable?

We should learn thirty -seven or thirty-nine things, I
am not exactly sure which : but one thing, at least, we may
learn, and that is this — when we see efts in the pond, never
to throw stones at them, or catch them with crooked pins , or
put them into vivariums with sticklebacks, that the stickle¬
backs may prick them in their poor little stomachs, and
make them jump out of the glass into somebody s work-box,
and so come to a bad end. For these efts are nothmg else
but the water-babies who are stupid and dirty, a7id will
not learn their lessons and keep themselves clean; and,
therefore (as comparative anatomists will tell you fifty
years hence, though they are not learned enough to tell you
now), their skulls grow flat, their jaws grow out, and their
brains grow small, and their tails grow long , and they lose
all their ribs ( which I am sure you would not like to do),
and their skins grow dirty and spotted, and they never get
into the clear rivers, much less into the great wide sea, but
ha7ig about in dirty ponds, and live in the 7nud, and eat
w or 7ns, as they deserve to do.

But that is 710 reaso7i why you should ill-use them :

2 B

370 THE WATER-BABIES.

but only why you should pity them , and be kind to them ,
and hope that some day they will wake up , and be ashamed
of their nasty , dirty, lazy , stupid life , and try to amend \
and become something better once more. For , perhaps , if
they do so, then after 379,423 years, nine months, thirteen
days, two hours, and tiuenty-one minutes {for aught that
appears to the contrary ), if they work very hard and wash
very hard all that time, their brains may grow bigger, and
their jaws grow smaller, and their ribs come back, and
their tails wither off, and they will hern into water-babies
again, and perhaps after that into land - babies ; and
after that perhaps into grown men .

You know they wont ? Very well, I daresay you
know best. But you see, some folks have a great liking
for those poor little efts. They never did anybody any
harm, or could if they tried ; and their only fault is, that
they do no good — any more than some thousands of their
betters. But what with ducks, and what with pike, and
what with sticklebacks, and what with water-beetles, and
what with naughty boys, they are “ sae sair hadden dounf
as the Scotsmen say, that it is a wonder how they live ;
and some folks cant help hoping, with good Bishop Butler,
that they may have another chance, to make things fair
and even, somewhere, somewhen, somehow.

A FAIRY TALE FOR A LAND-BABY. 371

Meanwhile , do you learn your lessons , and thank God
that you have plenty of cold water to wash in ; and wash
in it too , like a true Englishman. And then , if my story
is 710 1 true , soinething better is; a7id if I am not quite
right , still yoit will be , as long as you stick to hard work
a7id cold water.

But remember always , as I told you at first , that this
is all a fairy tale, and only fun and pretence ; and , there¬
fore , you are not to believe a word of it, even if it is true.

Printed by R.

..

& R. Clark, Edinburgh.